


The winter and the spring

by PunkyNemo (TheVampireCat)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Double Date, Drunk David, F/M, First Date, First Kiss, Humour, Nonsense, post The Punisher, saccharine FLUFF, these two are just such idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-21 03:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14907347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVampireCat/pseuds/PunkyNemo
Summary: He can't replace what he's lost. The things he once had are gone and that part of his life is over. But he looks at Karen Page as she sips her coffee and watches the last snow of the season falling to the ground, and thinks maybe there's a chance something new has begun.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been wanting to write this for ages and I just never got around to it and I found that in a weird way not doing this just kind of clogged up everything else and prevented me from getting on with my chaptered stuff. It wanted to be out in the world so here it is. 
> 
> Originally, it was conceived as a one-shot that was mainly humourous but it evolved into something angstier and a little darker as I went along and got too long for single chapter, but I still think it works as something light and fluffy.
> 
> The whole thing is written and I hope to post a new chapter every day or two. I don't know how many chapters it will be because I am having real trouble chopping them up as this was not conceived as a multi-chapter work. I'd go with six or seven but they will be shorter than my normal chapters.
> 
> Anyway, please let me know what you think.

He meets her for coffee the last Friday of every month.

 

He's not sure how this happened, how they fell into this habit that they shouldn't have, but they did. And they do.

 

Friday. 6pm. Like clockwork. An old and surprisingly good coffee house on the outskirts of Hell’s Kitchen, hidden down a dingy alley and wedged between a sex shop and an abandoned movie theatre.

 

The truth is he's not really sure how it stays open; they're usually the only ones here, the phone never rings and there's no walk-in traffic. But it does. And there's always something halfway decent baking in the ancient oven and the waitress is pleasant and generous with refills… and he finds there's some things he doesn't really want answers to.

 

Things like why Karen comes, why she never misses a day, why she always looks happier than she should to see him.

 

Things like what will happen when one of these things isn't true anymore.

 

He tries really hard not to think about that too much.

 

He always arrives first, manages to slip in just before she gets there, orders something black and bitter for himself, something sweet and light for her. She’s not fussy and he thinks on some level she might find it amusing that he uses her as a guinea pig like this, letting her test whatever fucking salted caramel syrup frappuccino with raspberry chocolate fucking sprinkles they're flogging on any given day.

 

It's all bullshit. They both know it. He's never going to change from the dark roast long black to something easier. Smoother.

 

Sillier.

 

Still, there's something about the idea he finds endearing; even if there's something about her smile when she sees what he bought her that hits a little close to home, breaks a little too deep into his heart.

 

It's doing both those things now as she's standing next to the table, dusting snow off her shoulders, undoing her coat and tossing her purse into the booth, glancing briefly at the steaming Venetian mochaccino in front of her, the ridiculously tiny pieces of shortbread arranged in the saucer.

 

For a terrible, wonderful moment he lets himself believe the smile - and all that comes with it - is for him.

 

But only for a moment.

 

And then she's sitting down, pushing her hair out of her face and he's looking up from his newspaper, catching her eyes briefly, and he can feel his mouth quirking on the side; sees hers doing the same goddamn thing before she looks away, down at her hands, the coffee, the gouged wood of the table.

 

“Was nearly late,” she says as she pulls off her gloves and he’s suddenly wildly distracted by the slimness of her fingers, the blue veins he can see under her skin.

 

“That right?” he asks as he folds the paper neatly and slides it to the edge of the table.

 

She nods.

 

“ _Someone_ …” and she leans on the word long enough so that he looks up at her, catches her eye again. “Someone sent Mahoney enough evidence to put Julian Montaigne away forever. When they got there to arrest him he was basically waiting for them and begging them to take him in.”

 

He shrugs, makes a small sound in the back of his throat. “Is that so?”

 

She narrows her eyes and again he finds himself completely enthralled by that little smile - the way it gives nothing and everything away at the same time.

 

“Yeah. So strange don't you think?” Her tone tells him she doesn't find it strange in the slightest.

 

She takes a sip of her coffee it must be good because for a second she seems to forget he’s there, and he realises he could spend every goddamn waking minute of his life watching Karen Page drink coffee.

 

“Very _strange_ ," he agrees. "Heard Montaigne was an ass, that he had it coming…”

 

“Did you now?”

 

He shrugs again. “People talk.”

 

“Mhmmm, I’m sure they do.”

 

It’s not a lie. Julian Montaigne _was_ an ass. He owned a dodgy strip club on ninth that violated pretty much every health code in the state and that was before anyone even so much as scratched at the grime and semen stains to look below the surface and see what was going down behind the scenes.

 

Drug smuggling, dog fighting and girls disappearing far too regularly to just be drifters or runners.

 

So he took matters into his own hands. Or fists, as the case may be.

 

The truth is he doesn't do this often. Not anymore. But sometimes - like in the case of Montaigne - it just gets too bad and he can't ignore it.

 

For the most part though, he's content to sit back and let the law take care of its own. After all, he's got another shot, a second chance most men only dream about and for the first time in years it feels like he's got something he doesn't want to lose.

 

He looks over at Karen and wonders if that something isn't bigger than he first thought.

 

“Anyway…” she pops a piece of shortbread into her mouth. “So Mahoney called it into the paper because he thought I might know something, which of course I didn't, and Ellison made me write it up before I could leave.”

 

“Your boss is an asshole.”

 

She chews thoughtfully, nods.

 

“He is,” she agrees. “Also might be nice if Hell’s Kitchen vigilantes were a little more considerate of publishing schedules.”

 

And he can’t help the shy smile that spreads over his face, the way she manages to make him feel both appreciated and put in his place at the same time.

 

“I’m sure they’ll keep that in mind ma’am,” he says.

 

“Would just hate to have to cancel on you because some angsty crusader has an ax to grind in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

She’s flirting. He wasn’t sure before but he is now and he’s not even sure she knows it.

 

“If someone did that, I’d have to go have a long talk with him. Your time is important.”

 

It's true. It is. And even if she only gives him a few moments of it every month, it's more than he deserves and he wouldn't want to squander it.

 

She gives him another smile, pushes the hair out her face again.

 

“So Frank, why don't you tell me about your day?”

 

He does.

 

~~~

 

They talk about everything and nothing. She tells him about her job, about how her boss is generally a good guy but also knows how to push her buttons. He tells her about Curtis, sometimes about David. He talks about his family, about Maria and the kids and he notes she never talks about hers but he doesn't ever press. They avoid the topic of Murdock and he doesn’t really know if that is by design or simply because there’s not much to say. She’s lonely though. He knows that for sure. She doesn’t see as much of Foggy as she’d like because he’s always working and when he’s not, she is. She confesses that sometimes she finds it hard to make friends, to open up. And he thinks this is important and understands that she’s trying to tell him something even if he doesn’t really know exactly what it is yet.

 

The truth is though, he doesn’t really mind what they talk about or whether they talk at all. He just likes being with her, sharing these stolen moments together. It’s peaceful and he thinks they could both do with a little peace.

 

And it always ends too soon. It always seems that only minutes have passed before one of them looks at the time or the sky and realises that staying any longer might mean more than it should. And then it's a reluctant gathering of belongings and a generous tip for the waitress before they step out into whatever hell - or in some cases, heaven - Hell's Kitchen has waiting for them before they see one another again.

 

Sometimes he kisses her goodbye. It's become one of those things they do as they're standing in the street waiting to take their leave. He never plans it, never really thinks about it, but every now and then he’ll just cover her shoulders with his arm and press his lips to her cheek or her temple. It's always slow. It's always gentle and he finds he lingers longer than he should. Her cheeks are soft, plump, flesh pliable under his mouth… while her temple is harder, skin pulled taut over bone. If he kisses her temple he has a moment to smell her hair but with her cheek his lips can graze the corner of hers.

 

He hasn't decided what he likes best. He doesn't think he needs to choose.

 

He doesn't kiss her today though. Part of him feels certain things should be savoured, taken in small halting doses, stretched over time until he's had his fill.

 

Or maybe he's just a coward.

 

She's not though.

 

She turns to him on the sidewalk and before he knows it her arms are around him and her face buried in his neck, the tip of her nose icy against his skin.

 

This is her thing. Her little attack hugs he never sees coming but always relishes when they do. He thinks she likes to take him by surprise, show him he's not all vigilance all the time. And with her, letting his guard down doesn't feel like the anathema it should.

 

He hugs her back, maybe a little too hard, maybe a little too tight. Her perfume is fresh and citrusy but he's more interested in the smell of her skin as he turns his face into the crook of her shoulder, that gentle powdery smell of rose and vanilla.

 

She sways. She always does. It's like the first steps of a dance and he wonders for the hundredth thousandth time what it would be like to do that with her. How it would feel to hold her close, his hands on her skin and know he doesn't need to let go until the song is over.

 

And maybe not even then.

 

When she pulls away it's also slow, not the half-shocked, half embarrassed wrench she did the first time they did this. This is easy, comfortable, a gentle slide backwards and she keeps her hands on his shoulders, so he keeps his at her waist.

 

“Same time next month?” she asks.

 

It feels very far away when she says it like that. It’ll be April. The snow will be gone, turned to slush on the sidewalks, blocking the drains, shops will be advertising their summer ranges because everybody needs a fucking swimsuit on the first day of spring. It may as well be a different world.

 

But, like the kisses and the touches, the long lingering looks, he wonders if this isn’t also something to be stretched and savoured - not run into recklessly. He almost wants to laugh at that. The idea of the two of them not running headlong into danger, not throwing caution to the wind _is_ laughable. That’s never been them. Not for a second.

 

Until now.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’ll be good to see you.”

 

She regards him for a few seconds and his fingers twitch on her hard enough that he sees the flare of something a little reckless in her eyes.

 

Maybe she sees the same in his.

 

Maybe.

 

“You be careful,” she says.

 

“You too.”

 

And then she's gone and he thinks she takes part of his heart with her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today. Let's start strong and all that.

When Frank thinks about it - and that happens more often than he's willing to admit - he has to acknowledge that while the universe has kicked him in the teeth harder than it should any living thing capable of basic emotion, there have been aspects of his life - this new one - that make him happy.

 

Karen is always at the centre of that. Solid, reliable. Foundational to whatever he's trying to scrape together in the hope that maybe he doesn't always have to be a dead man.

 

He didn't expect it after what happened. He didn't expect there'd be anything soft left for them after Schoonover. After Rawlins.

 

After Billy.

 

And yet there is. And she doesn't press at it or bruise it. They don't gnaw at what they have and try to define it. They just  _ are _ and, for now, that's okay, even if he knows on some level he's well past the point of no return when it comes to falling in love with her; even if he knows that sometimes when she gets quiet and he catches her watching him that she is too.

 

He has less luck with David though. He settled back into his life easily; him and Sarah almost immediately bouncing back to what they once had which, if Frank had to guess, was something akin to that bizarre exhilaration teenagers feel when they start to notice other teenagers. Not that that's all there is - of course not - but they're silly and they're goofy and can literally never hide exactly how much time they spend in the bedroom.

 

The kids are doing good too. Zach is a lesser douche and Leo is back to being daddy’s princess who tells him off and kicks his ass when Sarah won't. And Frank guesses that's pretty much all David has ever needed.

 

That and apparently the opportunity to goad Frank into talking about Karen every chance he gets. He ignores it for the most part. Tuning David and his nonsense out was never difficult; giving him nothing and leaving him to wonder was even easier. 

 

Sarah though, Sarah is another story entirely.

 

So he's standing in their kitchen on Saturday morning drinking coffee and eating a cheese muffin Sarah’s just taken out of the oven, and feeling about as much like a third wheel as a third wheel can feel before it becomes unmanageable when David slaps the newspaper down in front of him and points to Karen's name on the second page.

 

“Your girlfriend’s stirring up shit again,” he says.

 

She's not. The story isn't even particularly hard hitting by Karen's standards; the mayor has been caught with his hand in the city coffers and she's calling for a full investigation citing his long and less than reputable legacy as reason enough for it, even without the latest scandal. At best it’s a weekend puff piece, at worst a concession by her asshole boss to give her an outlet for her ire in a place most people won't see it. Page two. Saturday paper. It says all it need to say.

 

But Frank's pretty sure David knows that already. He's also pretty sure this whole little drama is nothing more than an opening so that he could talk about Karen and that he would have found a way to bring her up regardless of whether her name appeared on his morning paper or not. In fact the very idea of David reading his news off honest-to-god newsprint and not some conspiracy site hidden in the depths of the dark net is ludicrous.

 

So Frank puts on his best “what you gonna do” face, shrugs, and takes another bite of his muffin. It's hot and buttery and it means he can ignore David without actually appearing rude, even if he's not all that worried about being rude to David.

 

The only thing is - and it's a small thing, but he should know it's always the small things that fuck him up in the end - he hadn't factored Sarah into the equation.

 

She turns around, balancing a second tray of muffins on a pair of enormous red oven gloves - her  _ Kiss The Cook _ apron streaked with flour - and glares at him like Pete Castiglione and everything that came with him was nothing but a blip on the radar compared to this latest betrayal she's hearing about.

 

“You have a  _ girlfriend _ ?” She says it like an accusation, like this is something she's asked him on multiple occasions and is only now finding out that he lied on every single one.

 

And he can't help it, he flinches, takes the smallest step backwards.

 

Sarah’s nice. He likes her. All the same she's never been the type he could imagine cowering under, not the kind of woman who could bring him to his knees (even though he's pretty sure she does that to David often enough in other, less family friendly circumstances) but now he's not so sure. Because right now Sarah Lieberman looks downright furious and he’s already wondering how exactly he's going to dodge a tray of hot cheese muffins aimed at his head in such close quarters.

 

She'd have good aim. He's pretty sure she'd have good aim.

 

“You. Have. A. Girlfriend.” She repeats. “And you didn't tell me. You… you… _asshole_!”

 

And he feels for the first time that this situation between him and Karen has even been a thing known to anyone in the Lieberman household that he's going to need to say something. Something lame. Something like “she's not my girlfriend” or “we're just friends”. Something like “David is crazy” and “all that time in the basement went to his head”. Definitely not something like “Yes I do and I see her for coffee the last Friday of every month and she tears my whole fucking world apart when she smiles”. Definitely not “I would lay down and die for her just because she asked.”

 

Definitely not something like that.

 

So David does it for him. Fucking David.

 

“Been going on for a while now,” he offers and it's not even remotely helpful. Or true. “Since before he went to jail…”

 

Okay maybe it's a little bit true.

 

“Nearly threw our whole arrangement when he thought she might get a scratch on her,” David shrugs. “Truth is he'd probably set himself on fire if Karen Page complained of a chill.”

 

And suddenly Sarah doesn't look so angry anymore. Her face softens and either the heat of the baking tray finally makes its way through her oven gloves or she decides against throwing it at his head - Frank personally thinks it's the former - and she puts the muffins on the counter, frowns at both of them.

 

“Karen Page?” She says. “I know that name.”

 

David points to the newspaper but she shakes her head.

 

“No no, she was on the news… right before you came home,” her eyes flick back to David and then to Frank as realisation dawns. “They said you kidnapped her and tried to blow her up… they said you'd done it before too, at a diner in Brooklyn… and that you tried to shoot her in a hospital down in Hell’s Kitchen.”

 

Her voice has drops to a whisper, as if she's frightened that talking about this too loudly will somehow make it true. And then, seemingly realising how ridiculous this line of thought is she looks at him like she's hoping for an explanation - one that doesn't sound as bad as the list of crimes she's just rattled off - and David charitably provides one.

 

“Babe, for them that's called foreplay.”

 

Sometimes he really does wish he'd just left David naked and cold and tied to that fucking chair. Sometimes he really does. Right now he'd happily go back in time and change things so that he could.

 

Thing is though… thing is he thinks at the very least David's quip should break some of the tension and when he looks back at Sarah he expects to see a little smile creeping onto her face. Some small indication that her husband’s crude sense of humour has saved the situation from turning too serious.

 

Except it hasn't. Not at all. In fact she's frowning even harder and chewing on her bottom lip.

 

“I just can't believe you didn't tell me,” she says as she pulls the oven mitts off and tosses them in the general direction of the laundry basket.

 

“Nothing to tell.”

 

“This guy,” David says dryly and shakes his head, picks a muffin out of the tray and swears when it burns his fingers.

 

Serves him right. Frank hopes it hurts him to type for a week at least.

 

“I just can't believe you've been holding out on us,” Sarah crosses her arms as she leans back on the counter. “After all this time.”

 

“Man’s a closed book,” David says as he licks butter off his fingers.

 

“But he's not,” Sarah says. 

 

And there's something in the way she says it that makes him pay attention. It's not a big thing, not at all, but it's there and he realises this runs deeper for her than a simple omission of fact on his part; that her initial incredulity was partly a disguise for something else. David hears it too because he suddenly looks up at her and, for the first time since this godforsaken conversation started, he seems concerned that he's pushed too far and has overstepped somehow. 

 

“So,” she says, and while there's a chuckle in her voice, it feels a little forced. “So what's up with you and Karen Page?”

 

He knows he has to answer. He has to. But he doesn't want to. Mainly because he thinks he can't. To answer is to define. To answer is to put a label on this and no label can really express what it is that he has with Karen. But Sarah's looking at him and even though her eyes are sparkling and her anger is still slightly mocking, she hasn't yet mastered the emotion lurking underneath it all.

 

But Frank knows what it is. He knows it well.

 

It's hurt and something else that looks very like disappointment. And no, he's not a fool. This has nothing to do with what happened between them and nothing to do with that fleeting attraction she had for him which if he's honest was probably at least 60% his fault. 65. Maybe 70. No, this is something else. This is something that does stem from that time but isn't about warm hugs or a reckless kiss. This is from a heart to heart over rosé wine. This is from a gentle and reciprocated admission that sometimes kids ain't all that and that it's hard being alone. This is about finding something to care about to help you through.

 

_ (Have you found something to do that for you?) _

 

Yes. Yes he has. And he's been a bad friend not to share it.

 

Still, he doesn't know what he can say. He doesn't know how he can explain Karen Page to anyone, least of all himself.

 

Either way he has to try.

 

So he looks at David and he knows he's not going to get any help from him. He's also pretty sure this has been engineered to force him to talk about Karen and not for the first time he realises how utterly manipulative David can be.

 

To what end though?

 

But he doesn't have time to worry about that because Sarah’s face is getting sadder by the second and he really doesn't want to make her sad.

 

He sighs. He has to do this. He has to do something.

 

And once he's done he's going to shove a fork into David's eye. 

 

“Karen…” he trails off as he grasps at something that feels real, something solid. “Karen helped me when no one else would. She's… she's a special lady and I probably wouldn't be here without her.

 

“I don't like to talk about her because… because…” He glances between David and Sarah and he knows he needs to say something else, finish it off. “She's family,” he says firmly. “She is. All I can say.”

 

It might seem like a cop out but it really isn't. It's really the best he has. In fact, it's  _ all _ he has and the truth is he's worried that if he says too much the universe might hear him and take it all away. 

 

Sarah eyes him coolly for a good few seconds but he's pretty sure he's okay, that this fitted whatever bill of amends she might have had in her head. And when her face breaks into a smile he stops worrying and relaxes a bit.

 

“Well,” she says dusting imaginary flour off her hands and her voice has lost that terrible lilt. “That settles it. We have to meet her. I don't like having family members I've never met.”

 

“Say what now?”

 

Somewhere he can hear the kids coming in the backdoor; Leo is telling Zach about some calculus homework and Zach’s answering in grunts, but none of that seems very relevant at the moment because David is pushing himself away from the counter and putting an arm around Sarah's shoulders.

 

“I think what my gorgeous wife is saying is that she's decided you're family and that means Karen is too…”

 

“David…”

 

“No, she’s right,” David pauses and when he speaks again he doesn't even try to hide the smirk on his face and Frank realises that he's been outmaneuvered with alarming skill. “So, what are you two doing Friday after next?” 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, these two are just such dumbasses.

Nothing as it turns out. They’re doing nothing.

 

And he can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

 

He makes an unscheduled visit to her office, waits outside on the pavement like a dumbass for her to get off work. This isn’t like before. He doesn’t need to hide under a blanket and beg her for change, even if on some level this does feel like he could get into begging territory. He can stand there in the weak sunlight with the cold stinging his skin, hands stuffed in his pockets and it doesn’t matter if anyone sees him. And even though he likes it, even though he’s used to it, he doesn’t _have_ to hide in the shadows.

 

So he waits and when he sees her coming out of the paper’s glass doors something catches in his chest. It’s not big or bold, it doesn’t feel like the first time he saw Maria when he was 19 and stupid and he was convinced in that moment that she was the only woman on earth. This is slow and soft, gentle even. It feels almost like a realisation of something that he’s always known, a solidifying of everything that has happened before that brought him to this point.

 

She’s here. She’s here and she’s special and even though he is still adamantly refusing to define this intimacy they have, he knows it’s not something that will just go away on its own.

 

And he’s good with that. He doesn’t want it to go away.

 

“Hey lady,” he calls as she walks by. “Got any change?”

 

He doesn’t know why he says it. He could have just messaged her. He has her number and they do text to pass the time between visits. And yet the idea never occurred him, or if it did, it was so fleeting that he dismissed it. He wanted to see her, he wanted to do this face to face. Something tells him she would like that. Something else tells him -  and he can’t shake the feeling that it’s Maria’s ghost - that this is one of those things that needs to be done right.

 

So he does.

 

She freezes for a second but when she turns to him she already has a smile on her face. It’s sweet and it’s genuine and there isn’t even much wariness in it.

 

“I’m all out,” she says.

 

“Pity, I was going to give you flowers.”

 

“Bet you do that to all the girls.”

 

It’s a joke but it cuts a little close to the bone and he thinks of Sarah’s face when she realised exactly how secretive he’s been with her and how many lies he told. He fully believes the end justified the means in that case. He fully believes that if anyone asked her if having David back was worth a million lies, she’d say yes, but it still doesn’t make him feel good about it.

 

“Frank?” Karen’s voice is warm if a little concerned and he realises he’s just been standing there like a fool and somehow expecting her to know why.

 

“Can we talk?” he asks and he knows he shouldn’t be following this script. She’ll spook, tell him she’s not going to help him find anyone and even when he tells her that that is not why he’s here, it’ll put a damper on things. It’ll ruin this equilibrium they’ve found. And he really, _really_ doesn’t want to do that.

 

But when she answers him her voice is strong and confident and he wonders if these last few months have earned him a level of trust that wasn’t there before.

 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah of course.”

 

“I just need a moment of your time. It ain’t nothing. Not really.”

 

“Well, let’s go hear about all this nothing,” she says as she takes him arm and heads down the street.

  


~~~

 

But it is something. It most definitely is.

 

She doesn’t take him to her apartment again and he thinks that makes sense. It feels too soon, but it also feels like it would be too similar to the last time and they might inadvertently kick off another series of events that would result in a bombed city and a lost - and possibly last - moment in an elevator. They clawed their way back from that, there’s no reason to tempt fate this soon again.

 

So they go to the park instead. The weather is crisp and cold but there’s almost no wind and most of the late snow melted over the weekend which was earlier than he thought it would be, but not really surprising. She buys them drinks from a food vendor -  a black coffee for him and the same for her - and leads him to a wooden bench in amongst some evergreen trees.

 

The park itself is mostly empty. School’s out but it’s really too cold for the kids to be here - if going to parks is a thing kids even do anymore. There’s the occasional jogger or group of joggers, people walking their dogs, one or two couples strolling hand in hand between the trees.

 

It’s nice and it’s quiet and even though he knows why they limit their visits to once a month - even though he knows why they don’t want to force this forward - he realises how much he misses her during the times between. Sure, he has the Liebermans and he has group and Curtis, but he hasn’t got this. He hasn’t got this fragile thing that isn’t fragile at all.

 

Well he’s about to shatter that anyway, one way or another.

 

He gulps down a mouthful of coffee, nods to a cyclist who whizzes by. It’s ridiculous but he actually feels a bit nervous. He doesn’t think that’s because he’s worried she’ll say no.

 

“So,” he starts, drumming his fingers on the side of his styrofoam cup. “So, my friend David…”

 

He glances at her to make sure she knows who he means. It’s silly really because it isn’t like he has a lot of friends and it isn’t like she wouldn’t remember the very man she helped him find; the man who he has to admit, is the reason he’s alive and sitting here right now.

 

But she nods encouragingly and he takes a breath and continues.

 

“He wants to meet you.”

 

She frowns. It’s not one of her unhappy frowns; she’s not wary or concerned. Just intrigued. Curious.

 

“Why?” she asks.

 

He has no idea what to say to that.

 

_He wants to meet you because he thinks there’s something going on between us and he wants to see what it is for himself. He wants to meet you because he saw me lose my shit when I realised Lewis was going after you. He wants to meet you because he knows I’d die for you._

 

None of these answers are good. None of these answers let him play it remotely cool like he wants to. None of them allow him to stay truthful and also maintain this gentle balance their relationship has found. But she’s watching him closely and he knows he won’t get far with a shrug and an exasperated look.

 

“He’s David and he’s weird,” he says as if that explains everything and then rushes to continue. “He’s asked us out for dinner Friday after next and he’s just… he's just been busting my ass about meeting you for so long now. He’s relentless. Every time I see him he asks about you, every time he sees your name in the paper… and now his wife is on at me too and…”

 

Even as as he’s speaking he wonders why he’s overselling this.

 

And then she tells him.

 

Her mouth quirks on the side, a small smile he doesn’t think he’s meant to see, and she cocks her head and then she’s looking at him in that way that simultaneously shuts him up and tells him she’s seeing right through him.

 

“Are you asking me on a date Frank Castle?”

 

She always did have a way of cutting through bullshit - his and everyone else’s. Tell Karen Page some long, involved story and she hits you right back with the bare bones, the little kernel of hard truth that’s both frightening and undeniable. Except for now. Because now, since the first time he’s ever met her, Karen Page is undeniably, categorically _wrong_.

 

He’s not asking her on a date. There’s not a scenario on Earth where Frank Castle asks Karen Page on a date and it makes sense. Not after everything that’s happened. Not after what happened in that elevator, not after the way he’s worn his heart on his sleeve. Not now when they’ve climbed into each other, broken each other and come out as something else on the other side. A date is something normal people do. A date is a precursor to something else where what’s left unsaid is nothing more than a form of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. And they’ve already done that. They’ve already done all of that. A date almost seems like working backwards.

 

And yet… and yet...

 

And yet he’s staring at her face and her blue eyes and he’s wondering what they’d look like in candlelight. He’s staring at that warm woollen coat she’s wearing and he’s wondering what it would be like if she had something lacy and delicate on underneath, how her hair would look pulled back from her face and loose around her shoulders. He’s wondering what she would order to eat and if she’d prefer red or white wine or stick with beer regardless.

 

If he could kiss her goodnight after…

 

But no, no it’s not a date because it can’t be and he fully intends to tie himself up in knots to prove it isn’t.

 

And then he hears Maria’s voice in the back of his head - just one word - and it changes everything.

 

_Why?_

 

Why indeed.

 

And it’s like the tension and the denial drains out of his body in a wave.

 

He snorts, shakes his head at himself, and looks away across the grass to where an old woman is walking an equally old dog.

 

Sometimes he can’t believe how much of a fucking fool he really is. Sometimes he’s completely blown away by his own idiocy.

 

He takes a sip of his coffee. It’s hot and bitter and he scrunches up his nose as he swallows. Nothing to do. Nothing to do but come clean. Be honest. Karen Page doesn’t settle for less anyway.

 

He sighs.

 

“I guess I am, but considering you had to check I'm probably not doing a real great job.”

 

“No,” she says good-naturedly. “No you’re not.”

 

When he smiles at her, he’s pretty sure it’s more than slightly sheepish.

 

“It’s been a while, I'm a little rusty,” he tells her and she nods indulgently. “Shoulda bought the damn flowers,” he adds and she huffs softly.

 

The dog is getting treats now and wagging his tail so hard that his whole body is moving from side to side. He’s a gigantic ham and for some reason Frank finds that incredibly amusing. Or maybe he just finds himself and this ridiculous situation amusing.

 

But finally he can’t put it off anymore and he takes a breath, sets his cup down and turns so that he’s facing her and their knees are almost touching.

 

“l’m gonna give it another shot,” he says firmly.

 

She smiles and brushes the back of his hand and it’s like the whole world exists in that space where her skin presses on his.

 

“I think you should.”

 

He narrows his eyes, regards her with a bit of mock suspicion. “You still all heart Karen Page?”

 

“Better ask me and find out.”

 

And after that it’s easy.

 

~~~

 

She says yes. It wasn't that he doubted she would. She says yes and it doesn't feel weird and it doesn't feel like they're changing this thing between them. Although, maybe that wouldn't be all bad.

 

But the important thing is she says yes and she has a smile on her face and it means he gets to see her three times in the space of time he'd usually only see her once. And that's good. That's a very good thing.

 

Afterwards, he walks her to her car and when she turns to face him and fumbles a little with her keys, he knows she’s not ready to say goodbye just yet. She asks if she can give him a ride somewhere and he says no, he's parked down the street and it's group night anyway and the gym isn't far.

 

She nods and he can see there's something a little wistful in her eyes. She encourages group, she supports it and the one time he suggested moving Friday coffee to Monday night she told him off and made him promise to never try and miss it again. Not for her. Not for anyone.

 

And he promised. And he doesn't lie to her.

 

So he knows it's not that she doesn't approve. But he also knows that it hurts her that he lives with this even if she seems to have made peace with the fact that he might never be okay again, that his mind and body might always be broken in very unique ways and she isn't enough to fix that and probably wouldn't want to be.

 

Still, he's spent a lot of time in hell and he knows it pains her to think of him like that.

 

But he's not going to dwell on that now. It's been a good day and even though he's still not sure about introducing her to David, he's feeling upbeat and it's just so good to see her.

 

She’s still lingering though, fingers on the door handle and he gives her arm a small squeeze.

 

“Next Friday then,” he says and she nods thoughtfully and then suddenly looks up at him.

 

“You never told me where,” she says.

 

It's true. He didn't.

 

He gives her a small smile. This is also easy. She makes these things easy.

 

“I'll pick you up around 7:30 at your place,” he says and rubs his thumb along the rough material of her coat. “I wanna do this properly.”

 

She nods again but she can't hide the way her eyes are sparkling, and biting her lip does nothing to disguise her smile.

 

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

 

“Okay?” he asks.

 

“Okay.”

 

_Beautiful girl. Beautiful wonderful girl._

 

For a second he just stands, thinking he should lean in and kiss her like he sometimes does. Just a brush of his lips on her cheek or temple. She wouldn’t mind. She’d probably lean right back, maybe wrap her arms around him too, and he could hold her for a few seconds. But like he knew it would, thinking about it makes it feel awkward and more difficult than it should be.

 

And then she's patting his hand on her arm and before he knows it she's slipped behind the wheel and shut the door.

 

“I'll see you,” she says.

 

“Yeah, take care.”

 

He taps the bonnet of her car and steps back onto the sidewalk to watch her drive away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today because I'm nice like that. Second one will follow in a few hours.

_“Hey lady, got any change?”_

 

That night at home she tries not to think about this too much. She tells herself it's not a big deal and that it makes sense that David would want to meet her. After all, she was the one who exposed him to Frank, she was the one who tracked down his home address with surprising ease. He thought he held all the cards and she took them away from him.

 

And yet, she doesn't feel any alarm at this. Frank trusts him and she trusts Frank and  she's fairly certain that while David might indeed want to size her up, it's probably only partly because of her investigative skills and more to do with what exactly she is to the man he now considers a friend.

 

Which leads her back to Frank. Frank and his soft eyes and his mean hands. Frank and his voice that drops to a low whisper when he speaks to her and makes her shiver even if he doesn't know it. Frank probably sitting in group now, fighting every impulse to leave and go out on the streets to hunt; gritting his teeth when Curtis asks him to speak and forcing Maria’s name out of his mouth, trying not to fall apart when he talks about his boy, his baby girl.

 

He breaks her heart. He always has. And the more she got to know him, the worse it got.

 

She wouldn't have it any other way.

 

She sighs, gets some leftover Thai takeout out of the fridge and puts it into the microwave, jabs buttons on the timer.

 

She picks up her phone, considers calling Foggy and then remembers he's in Aspen for the week on some kind of family reunion thing that he's been whining about. She thought it sounded great when he told her: skiing, spa days, horse-riding even, but he made it sound like an actual boot camp complete with 4am laps and room inspection.

 

Not that Foggy would have been much help with this anyway. She's not sure how she would even begin to explain it to him.

 

And, she thinks as she chewing on her cashew chicken curry without really tasting it, maybe there isn't that much to say. It's just dinner. It's not even just the two of them and considering their coffee dates and literally everything else that's ever happened when they've been in the same space together, this might well be the _least_ intimate encounter they've ever had.

 

It's just dinner. With friends. It doesn't have to be anything else.

 

But as she sits on her couch looking at the pot of blooming white roses Frank gave her once upon a time, she knows it's not true.

 

~~~

 

Tuesday goes by in a haze. She tries very very hard to concentrate on work, tells herself over and over again that this isn't A Thing. That the moment she touched him and pressed her forehead to his in that elevator, when he was bloodied and bruised and consumed with the sole purpose of saving her life goes far beyond any intimacy that could come out of something as mundane as a dinner.

 

This is true. It will always be true.

 

But maybe that doesn't mean they can't have something else as well. Maybe they don't always need to be operating in a state of high tension and angst. Maybe he doesn't always need to be saving her life and maybe she doesn't always need to be worrying about him jumping back on that downward spiral and becoming a dead man that still walks. Maybe it doesn't always have to feel like they're ripping each other's hearts out.

 

It'll always be there but maybe it's not all that has to be there.

 

It's not really confusing but she feels confused all the same.

 

By Thursday her worries have become more practical; She has no idea what to wear.

 

Frank didn't tell her the name of the restaurant so they could be chugging beer and burgers or they could be trying to dig escargots out of their shells with tiny forks and washing it down with sips of Moët.

 

She tells herself she’s not sure which is worse but she knows it's the escargot.

 

She considers texting him and asking but, as her thumb hovers over his name on her phone, she decides not to. If there's one thing she does well it's dress for the occasion and she's never in her life asked for anyone's approval on her clothes and she's not going to start now. Besides she's pretty sure his answer will be vague and he’ll tell her not to worry, which will only reinforce that she is worried.

 

All the same, Thursday night finds her standing in front of her cupboard, any dress that exists somewhere between ballgown and sundress strewn across her bed. She's been at this for hours and as of yet has had no luck.

 

She also knows she's being picky and her criteria for dismissal becoming increasingly silly. The red empire line reminds her too much of Matt’s suit while the satin sheath is trying too hard to be the staple little black dress that every girl needs. The pink lace is too pretty and mint green princess makes her look washed out and more tired than she feels.

 

She swears out loud and packs everything back in the wardrobe, switches off the light and sits on her bed in the dark for a while before she climbs under the covers and falls asleep.

 

By Friday she's actively looking for a dress online. News is slow as it often is at the end of the week - apparently even criminals look forward to putting their feet up over the weekend - and stores are flirting with the idea of new spring stock on the shelves, so she spends more time than she should trawling the net for something pretty.

 

She finds a few things she likes, two or three dresses she can dress up or down depending on shoes and jewelry and no, she's firmly not allowing herself to worry about that yet.

 

After work she does head into the city to go and check out the possibilities and even though she's not expecting anything and already made up her mind that she's going to have to grit her teeth and go with something she already has, she's shocked  by how easy it turns out to be. Because things like this are never easy. They're not designed to be easy.

 

And yet…

 

There it is. The first shop she tries. A sales assistant is struggling to dress a mannequin, its fibreglass body parts strewn over the window display as she wrestles it into a satin Prussian blue slip dress.

 

It's simple with thick shoulder straps and a low but not plunging neckline, hemline just on the knee. It's not flashy but it can be if necessary and when Karen stands there alone in the fitting room, turning from side to side and pulling her hair over her shoulder so she can see how it skims her hips, she knows this is the one.

 

It's too easy, it's too perfect but somehow that feels right. Maybe some things don't need to be difficult. Or maybe the Frank of her imagination was right and she shouldn't worry. But she does. He's the kind of man who would notice these things. He might not attach any kind of judgement to it but he will notice. And, as she slips into a pair of matte silver heels, she decides to stop pretending that she doesn't want him to.

 

Yes, this is where she is, she realizes. So much for keeping it cool.

 

Eyes closed, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of her nose and she leans back against the ersatz fitting room wall.

 

She wonders if there's a word for the kind of anticipation that leaves you overwhelmed and terrified. Everything could change and nothing could change and she wants both of those things equally. She also doesn't want to get her hopes up - she's been burned too many times before. But there's some things we don't get to control and she knows that too.

 

And then she takes a breath, squares her shoulders and puts her own clothes back on.

 

She buys the dress and the shoes. The price tag hurts a little but even that feels appropriate like this should cost something, it should be special and memorable, and in any case payday isn't that far away.

 

Back out on the street the wind is up and it tears through her hair and whips her coat around her legs. She considers grabbing a coffee, maybe even dinner - there’s a sushi place three blocks away that she's heard is good - but just as she's starting to head in that general direction, the sky rumbles and the big drops of spring rain hit her directly in the face.

 

So she turns around and goes home to an empty apartment and a ready meal.

 

~~~

 

It rains all of Saturday and she tries to work but spends more time than she should pacing around the lounge and trying to find something in her smallish vinyl collection that doesn't make her think about Frank. And she has to admit that doesn't leave a whole goddamn lot. Because if it's not something she knows he likes like Springsteen, then it's something that reminds her of him and them and all the possibilities that lie ahead of them and the lost ones behind them.

 

By Sunday she's feeling more like herself again and she wonders if she's found some kind of sweet spot, a halfway mark between the asking and the actual event. She's pretty sure she has and that by Wednesday she's going to back to worrying.

 

But she enjoys the peace while she can. She stands at her window, hot mug of coffee in her hands and she watches the rain hurl itself at the window and lash across the city.

 

It's still cold, bitter in fact - she wouldn't dream of leaving the house without a coat - but there's something about the rain, about it's violent determination to clean everything in Hell’s Kitchen - the buildings, the parks, the streets and even the people - that makes her feel invigorated. It feels like it's washing the away the old and opening up the door for something new. She just doesn't know what yet.

 

She glances at her dress where it hangs on the coat hook behind the front door and then to the roses on the coffee table.

 

Maybe she does know what's new. Maybe it's staring her in the face.

 

Later she does a little spring cleaning and congratulates herself for being so damn predictable about it all and when she’s done she spends are inordinate amount of time looking at her roses and thinking about how she doesn't technically need them anymore but that the idea of letting them waste away or throwing them out is easily one of the most horrible she's ever entertained.

 

She moves them to the counter island where there's a chance that a thin beam of sunlight will touch them should the rain ever decide to stop.

 

And then it's another night of pre-cooked risotto and a rerun of some terrible action movie with Dolph Lundgren and she goes to bed early.

 

Before she falls asleep she wonders what it might be like if Frank was here next to her. No, not like that. She hasn't let her mind wander that far and for now, she's not going to. But she does imagine his presence, a gentle weight on the mattress, the relative temperature under the covers slightly warmer than usual, maybe his hand resting on her hip or his breath on her shoulder. She imagines waking up with him in the mornings, seeing his hair sticking up because she's pretty sure it does when it gets longer and the curls are given a little freedom from the brutal buzz cut he's now allowing to grow out. She imagines sitting at her kitchen counter while they drink coffee. He'd lean on it and pretend not to notice her bare legs and she’d watch him and remind herself that underneath it all he's still The Punisher and even when he's not wearing his chest piece, the skull is part of who he is. And that doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

 

It would be good. They would be good.

 

She listens to the sound of the rain and thinks he might feel the same way too.

 

~~~

 

Monday is fine.

 

Ellison keeps her busy by moaning about all her pitches and then rejecting only one. She’s used to this though. This is him. Bristly and contrary and always looking for an angle, and yet when it comes right down to it, he trusts her and her instincts and refuses to get in the way of that. She’s pretty sure he suspects something though. In fact, he has been finding subtle and not-so-subtle ways to interrogate her about Frank since the day of Lewis and the bomb and everything that happened after. She’s fobbed him off, told him - not untruthfully - that she can’t talk about it. She can tell him about Lewis and she can tell him parts of what happened in the basement, but her relationship with Frank Castle is off limits.

 

Occasionally he even respects that.

 

Foggy’s back on Tuesday and they meet up after work for a drink at Josie’s. He’s sporting a sprained ankle from a skiing accident. The story he tells makes it sound like he was freestyling at Olympic level when his cousin crashed into him and sent him careening down a slope and into a very inconveniently placed tree.

 

Karen suspects the truth is he just fell down.

 

Either way the week wasn’t completely terrible except for the same cousin’s delight in sharing the facts regarding the excessive bowel movements of her twin toddlers and his teenage niece going through a goth phase and playing old Type O Negative at full volume the whole time.

 

“ _Like latex, fur and feathers… STUCK TOGETHER!_ ” Foggy sings in a particularly bad impression of Peter Steele.

 

Karen laughs and gives him a sympathetic look but there’s something about him describing his family and all their shenanigans that makes her feel a little wistful, a yearning for something she lost, or maybe never had.

 

She wonders if her and Frank have this in common, if maybe that’s one of the myriad reasons why they see each the way they do.

 

When he asks what she’s been up to, she hedges. She’s not going to lie but she also doesn’t really want to bring Frank up. And it’s not only because she knows she will get the Foggy Disapproval Stare and he’ll try and talk her out of it - he already worries too much about their monthly coffees and even though he’s fully aware of everything that happened the day Lewis took her hostage he still has his reservations about this bond she has to a “psycho murderer” - but it’s also that she doesn’t want to bring it up for herself. She’s still riding the somewhat carefree wave where this isn’t a Big Deal and it’s nothing out of the ordinary and the fact that she bought a new dress and shoes for the occasion is just something anyone would do.

 

By the time she gets home, she realised she needn’t have bothered. Frank Castle and Friday night looms like a spectre in front of her. The anxiety is back and it’s chewing on her, making her shoulders sore and her neck stiff.

 

She takes a long, hot shower which doesn’t really help, tries on the dress again, which helps even less and then lies on top of the covers in her underwear and stares at the ceiling and concentrates very hard on not going out of her mind.

 

~~~

 

The rain is still pounding on Wednesday and she works from home, somehow managing to avoid all thoughts of Frank Castle and churn out more work than she would have in the office.

 

It's late that night when the rain stops and she looks up from her laptop and outside. The roses are still sitting on her counter and the city is strangely quiet and peaceful. She gets off the couch, stretches her legs and pours herself a glass of water. She's debating whether to start getting ready for bed or finish a third story for Ellison when her phone lights up. And somehow even before she's seen his name on her screen, she knows it's him.

 

_Still good for Friday?_

 

She stares at it for a while, black text against a pale blue screen. It's such a ridiculous question she wants to laugh out loud. It’s so simple and yet it’s impossible to answer. Yes, she's good. Yes, she's excited and yes this is something she very much wants to do and even if this wasn't a date, she'd just be happy to see him and spend time with him and not have to worry about people trying to hurt them. He's actually really good company when you get right down to it: funny and entertaining, a good listener too.

 

At the same time she can't pretend she hasn't been lying awake worrying, that she didn't go out and buy herself an expensive dress for this and she hasn't spent the last 10 days in a kind of jittery fugue.

 

She looks at his message again, considers telling him all this but it’s a lot to put in a text and he's probably just checking that she hasn't forgotten or something hasn't come up.

 

So she says she's good, she's looking forward to it and presses send. And then she stares at her fading screen and before it turns off completely she punches another message to him, this one shorter and sweeter too.

 

_Miss you._

 

He doesn't respond immediately but when he does it's just two words and it makes her heart clench a little. And it's not even for her and her own drama but rather for him and what it means that he can say this.

 

_Me too._

 

She doesn't want to get her hopes up but she goes to bed with a very happy heart.

 

~~~

 

Come Friday she’s eerily calm and so is the weather. It's still wet, but the rain stopped some time during the night and the sky is crisp and clear. And that weak ray of sunlight she hoped for is in fact touching her roses and is in fact making their white petals shine like mother of pearl.

 

She goes to work. She works hard. She gets her stories in on time and somehow spends the majority of the day not thinking about Frank.

 

She leaves early, goes home and takes a long shower, washes and conditions her hair.

 

Afterwards she slathers some body cream onto her skin, does her makeup and her hair. She decides to leave it long and loose - anything too styled might feel too formal for a dinner with friends - and then she digs through her draws for matching underwear and nude hose.

 

This is not a thing. This is entirely Not A Thing.

 

She does her nails and takes a break with a cup of coffee while she waits for them to dry. She checks her messages but there's just something from Ellison thanking her for getting the last story in so that he didn't have to run the latest Kardashian scandal on the front page. She tells him she's always happy to hear she's appreciated and there's no one she'd rather lose out to than the Kardashians and then heads back into the bedroom and slips into her shoes, pulls the dress over her head, smooths the skirt out and turns to look in the mirror.

 

And then as if he knew, the buzzer on her door goes and for a second everything freezes. There's no rain, not even a light drizzle misting up the windows, there's no wind and even the swish of the satin snaps into non existence.

 

There's just her. Just her and that buzzer and the man waiting on the other side of it.

 

And she has to move even though her legs feel heavy, even though she knows that's ridiculous because this is Frank. It's Frank. And she knows him and he knows her. He’d die for her - she thinks in many ways he's even tried - and nothing will ever change that.

 

She moves to the door, glancing at the clock on her living room wall as she does. It says 7:27 and she realises he's left himself three minutes to get inside and up to her floor. She guesses you can take the man out of the military but you can't take the military out of the man. She’s also pretty sure if he could have arrived an hour early he would have but has maybe realised dates aren't like wars and being too early is as rude as being too late.

 

She presses the buzzer and tells security to let him up and she doesn't give into that jittery feeling in her belly, she doesn't let her legs become loose and noodly even though she knows that's what they want to do.

 

She goes back to her room, loops a sparkling tennis bracelet over her arm. One more glance in the mirror, fingers raking through her hair and then there's a soft but solid knock at her door and she takes a deep breath and goes to answer it.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So gross, these two are just sickening.

He brings her flowers. He said he wanted to do this properly and he is. They're nothing ostentatious or cliche like red roses adorned with baby's breath and big gold-edged ribbon. No, these are simple black and white tulips with long smooth stems and heavy curling leaves wrapped in brown paper, and he hands them to her without ceremony or expectation.

 

“Yeah, uh, this is for you.”

 

And there's something about The Punisher standing in a florist picking out flowers that makes her throat close up. Again it's almost not even about her. It's not about the fact that he's showing _her_ this side of himself and that in her more honest moments she can admit that she is indeed the object of his affections. It's that he's willing to show this at all. That after everything he's been through, he's willing to believe it and give it a chance.

 

She realises fundamentally it's a gift, a dark and terrible gift and one she needs to value and protect, but it's a gift all the same.

 

And, as she puts the tulips into a vase on the counter next to the roses, she thinks to herself that that's okay. Good even. And maybe one day she'll give him a dark gift of her own.

 

“You have a good week?” She asks and he nods dismissively.

 

He's standing in the middle of her floor and looking around the apartment like this is the first time he's really seen it. And maybe that’s at least partly true. The last time he was here, he was stressed and upset and more concerned with finding Micro than much else. And then she was holding him and he was holding her back and maybe it was all too much.

 

Too much and not nearly enough. It may as well be their mantra.

 

“You?”

 

“Yeah, good. The Montaigne thing has died down. Mahoney is saying it's some kind of gang-related turf war.”

 

And then seemingly having seen all he cares to of her living room, he fixes his gaze on her.

 

“He believe that?”

 

She shrugs. Mahoney’s smart. And while Montaigne was more than a headache and he's probably grateful he's gone, she doubts he's just accepted the easiest explanation for his demise.

 

“They don't suspect you if that's what you're asking.”

 

He nods again and suddenly she doesn't like where this conversation is going. She knows she's not innocent in all this. She's done things, she's seen things and she still can't quite bring herself to completely dismiss what Frank did and sometimes still does as wrong.

 

She's always known her moral compass is a little temperamental.

 

Case in point: the Punisher is standing in her living room and looking at her like she's the only thing in the whole world worth looking at and she wouldn't have it any other way.

 

She stops fussing with the flowers and turns to look at him properly. He really does look very dapper in his casual charcoal suit and crisp white shirt, a navy scarf around his neck. The fact is he’s always cleaned up well and it helps that there are no bruises or scratches to speak of.

 

He looks like a responsible father, a devoted husband.

 

He looks like what he is.

 

“You ready?” he asks and she doesn't miss the way his eyes seem drawn back to her - to her face, her neck, her dress where it glides over her hips - and how, now that he's allowed himself to look at her, he seems to struggle to look anywhere else.

 

“Yeah. Yeah I am,” she says and it feels like she's answering a completely different question to the one he asked. “Are you?”

 

Also a different question, also one with far more gravitas than the words suggest.

 

He gets it. They both do.

 

He watches her solemnly for a few seconds  and then seemingly comes to some kind of decision.

 

He swallows audibly, ducks his head. She wonders if he's not speaking because he's deemed it unnecessary or if it's because he doesn't trust himself with words right now.

 

It could go either way.

 

But then he’s at the door, taking her coat off the rack and holding it out for her to slip her arms into the sleeves. Her fingers shake as she reaches for the buttons and her heart crowds into the back of her throat, making it hard to breathe.

 

  
She tells herself she’s being silly; that he’s Frank, her friend, her confidant and even though she hesitates to say it, in many ways her _protector_ , and it shouldn’t feel like this with him. Except, she realises wryly as she fumbles at her coat, it’s always felt like this with him. Maybe it’s because all their moments have been fraught; the shared seconds they’ve snatched from the world have for the most part been few and far between, imminent danger looming as they save each other’s lives over and over again. Maybe it’s because until now they’ve never had the time for this. Time to _be_ .

 

She wants to _be_ . She thinks he does too.

 

And there are no _shoulds_. There’s only them and tonight and what they make of it.

 

And then, as if he’s somehow sensed her thoughts, his hands curl around her shoulders, thumbs swiping across the thick fabric of her coat and pushing firmly against the edges of her shoulder blades.

 

She thinks she makes a small sound in the back of her throat, a little hiccuping gasp, maybe the start of a sigh - she can’t be sure and she doesn’t much care. She doesn’t much care about anything other than the fact that he’s big and he’s warm and he’s here and she gets to enjoy all three of those things.

 

He presses his face into her hair, rests his forehead against her skull for a long moment, and she hears him inhale sharply, feels his lips moving against her scalp as he starts to speak.

 

“I’m really glad we’re doin’ this Karen,” he says, voice low and soft.

 

It takes every ounce of willpower not to lean back into him, not to take his hands in hers and pull his arms around her, stay like that and sway until the night is over, wrench apart only when they see dawn’s light coming through the window. And maybe not even then.

 

But some things need to be done properly, in the right order at the right time. And Frank’s made it abundantly clear that tonight and everything that comes with it is one of those things. And she’s not going to take that away from him. From them.

 

So she turns her head slightly, doesn’t trust herself to look at him yet.

 

“Me too,” she says. Her voice is also thick and heavy, words sounding almost slurred as she reaches up, touches his knuckles with her fingertips.

 

He takes a deep ragged breath, kisses her just below her ear, mouth ghosting over her skin, and lets her go. It sends a shiver down her spine, and for a moment, she’s feels like she’s been cast adrift and she’s not sure she can stay standing.

 

She does though. She always does.

 

“Okay?” he asks.

 

_No. Not okay. Not okay at all. How can you even ask?_

 

But, when she turns to look at him and she sees the gooseflesh rising on his neck and his blown pupils black as coal in his head, she thinks maybe he wasn’t asking her as much as telling himself.

 

“Okay,” she says and he smiles at her, offers his arm.

 

She takes it and they head out into the night.

 

 ****~~~

 

Hell’s Kitchen isn't pretty - the clue’s in the name and all. And no, it might not look like Dante’s hell. It might not be all orange flame and barren landscapes, the smell of sulphur or brimstone might not permeate the air but there are lost souls and they are in torment. There are monsters and they do come out at night and drag people away for their sins, both real and imagined.

 

But tonight it feels different.

 

Tonight even the darkness looks bright and sharp. The sky is clear, there's no cloud cover to give that stifling and strange otherworldly quality which is so good at disorienting her, there's no smell of diesel or garbage.

 

It's still wet, water dripping down buildings and off awnings, cars covered in tiny beads that sparkle like gemstones, and puddles shimmering with rainbow colours under the gauzy halogen streetlights.

 

It looks almost magical and for the first time Karen finds she's not looking for terror lurking in the doorways and alleys. She's not looking for fear and rage and someone ready to rip her apart.

 

No Hell’s Kitchen isn't pretty, but tonight it's made an exception.

 

Frank doesn't say much. She thinks that like her, he's still reeling a little from before. Even if he's made a decision, it's going to take time to get used to it, time to feel it out, think it through and she's not going to rush that.

 

He leads her to his truck, holds the door for her and she gives his arm a squeeze as she climbs inside.

 

She's been in here before once. A long time ago when he killed Schoonover and then picked her up along the side of the road as she limped her way home. They didn't talk much then and they don't talk much now but the two situations couldn't be more different.

 

That was fraught and angry, both of them overwhelmed and exhausted and completely at odds with one another. She was ready to give up on him. Now that feels like an anathema.

 

He puts the radio on as he pulls out into the traffic. She expects something old and cheesy, something no later than 1987… or Springsteen. Springsteen is always a fair bet with Frank. But it's nothing like that. It's something melancholy and melodic, stripped down to a piano and a man’s gruff voice that shouldn't sound gentle but does.

 

 _When you have no one,_  
_No one can hurt you_  
_When you have no one,_  
_No one can hurt you_  
  
_In the corners there is light_  
_That is good for you_  
_And behind you, I have warned you,_  
_There are awful things_

 

They drive past the newspaper office and the Brooklyn bridge. The river shines like silver under the moon. He kissed her there once, he kissed her and told her that nothing could ever happen to her - that he wouldn't allow it - and she believed him.

 

But so much has happened to her. So so _so_ much. He doesn't even know. He has no idea.

 

They pass the hotel where he saved her life. He doesn't speak but he takes a hand off the wheel and rests it on her forearm, lingers for a moment longer than necessary. She rubs a thumb along his knuckles, inclines her head towards him and he seems to take it as confirmation that it's okay and she's alright.

 

And then they're leaving the city behind and heading towards the suburbs, the lights from the houses dotting the horizon in front of them like a bad impression of the starry sky above.

 

This was his world, or at least part of it. His was a life of green lawns and teaching kids to ride bikes, houses with sash windows and extra bedrooms for when relatives came to stay or maybe - just maybe - for that third baby that she's sure him and Maria thought about but never really got around to discussing. This was his life and in many ways that feels as foreign to her as his life over in Kandahar. Maybe more so.

 

But he's not that man anymore. He's not even the marine anymore. He's something different. Something both better and worse than both those things.

 

And maybe that’s where she fits in.

 

After all, her moral compass _is_ temperamental.

 

“Don't let David get to you,” he says suddenly and it jolts her out of her thoughts.

 

“He planning on getting to me?” She asks and he pulls a face. “I've seen pictures, I think I could take him.”

 

He chuckles.

 

“Yeah I'm pretty sure you could,” he says and then he sobers. “He’s weird. He thinks he's got…” he stops for a second and considers his words. “He thinks he's got it all figured out.”

 

She's pretty sure he was originally going to say “us” instead of “it” but she doesn't press.

 

“He’s a good guy though,” he continues. “I think you'll like him… but if you don't I can always shoot him.”

 

She snorts and his mouth twists into a grin. He reaches over and touches her arm again and this time she catches his hand and threads her fingers through his.

 

“You'll like his wife too. Sarah. She's great.”

 

There's something in the way he says Sarah’s name that makes her pay attention. She's not sure exactly what but if she had to hazard a guess she'd call it guilt. And she realises there's something else going on here, something that's bothering him, chewing on his conscience.

 

She doesn't ask. She has a feeling that she'll find out soon enough anyway.

 

They're well into the heart of suburbia now. The houses aren't uniform - they're old and have been built over time mixing and matching old and new styles - but there's a sameness to them, a kind of necessary aesthetic thread that she thinks residents find comforting. She wonders what that would be like.

 

Frank doesn't seem to be paying much attention though. His eyes are fixed on the road ahead but his hand is still warm and covering hers and she has no desire for him to move it.

 

She thinks he's probably going to turn off soon, head to some upmarket family local but he doesn't and the houses fade into the distance behind them.

 

She’s never been to this part of the city - despite living in New York for the last few years, there’s a lot of it and its surrounds she hasn’t seen - and somehow it feels right that she’s doing these things for the first time with him.

 

The thought makes her breath catch her chest for a second. She’s trying not to think too far ahead. A man like Frank makes that hard and she thinks he knows it. Still, she can’t help but let her thoughts slide down that road - the one that leads to all the places he’s been that she hasn’t: falling in love so hard it hurts, committing to one person and promising forever, building a life, building a home, maybe a family. These are all new to her and old to him and she wonders how much that matters. If it does at all.

 

“You alright?” he asks and she nods.

 

It’s not a lie. She is alright. She’s just nervous and maybe a little overwhelmed. But she can be these things and she can also be alright.

 

He squeezes her hand.

 

“That’s a really nice dress,” he says. "You look... you  _are_  very pretty Karen."

 

“Thanks. You don’t clean up too bad yourself.”

 

He doesn’t say anything but even in the dark car she can see him trying to hide a smile.

 

They drive for a few more miles and she watches the scenery change, the houses giving way to fields and forests. It’s all still wet, still dripping and shimmering. Bright. Fresh.

 

 _New_.

 

“I have no idea where I am,” she says. “I’ve never been out this way before.”

 

“We ain’t gonna get lost. I know the way.”

 

“You do, but I don’t and nobody knows I’m here.”

 

Again it feels like they’re talking about something else. He feels it too and his thumb rubs gently along the inside of her wrist.

 

“ _I_ know you’re here.”

 

He does. She guesses that's all that really matters now.

 

Eventually he takes a turn to the left that leads them onto a service road going through the woods. She catches a glimpse of an ornate sign between the trees which she assumes is for the restaurant but it's too dark to make out.

 

The road winds through the trees for a little while and then transitions into a dirt path and he lets go of her hand then, puts both of his firmly on the wheel and slows down.

 

“Goddamn it David,” he says as the truck bounces along.

 

“He pick the place?” She asks.

 

“Yeah, wouldn't let me do it…”

 

His voice is wry and exasperated but there's no anger in it and she thinks that maybe this is just the kind of relationship he has with David and she's glad that he's managed to find a friend like this, someone who pulls him out of his own head and doesn't take him too seriously and conversely doesn't let him take himself too seriously.

 

“Said he had the perfect place,” he adds as the road opens up in front of them and she sees the bright lights from the restaurant shining through the trees. “So we’ll see if he's right about that.”

 

As it turns out, he is.

 

~~~

 

She stands in the middle of the parking area, Frank closing the truck door behind her.

 

The air is crisp and she feels a little shiver go through her but she feels no urgency to run inside in search of warmth. She can smell the rain, the heavy scent of petrichor, and she can smell him. His aftershave, his soap and the tiny almost unnoticeable hint of gunmetal that she thinks has just become as much a part of him as his blood and bones.

 

Like in Hell's Kitchen, the puddles glitter and cast small halogen rainbows into the night. These are clearer though, brighter, not fighting pollution and immense amounts of dirt just to shine. They feel fresh and clean and so does everything else around her.

 

She glances up at the restaurant. It's a stone building, surrounded by a wide wooden porch where she's fairly sure couples come to sit in the warmer months. To the left there's a cluster of wine vats being used as planters for whatever might flower here when the sun comes out, and to the right, hidden in the actual grassy grounds - which she also suspects sees more traffic in summer - she can see the outline of a water fountain in the shape of a nymph.

 

“Well…,” says Frank and she knows he's sizing it all up. It's not that he doesn't like it. She's pretty sure he would say so if that was the case. She thinks, like her, he just can't quite decide if the rusticity (and yes, awkward as it may be that’s a real word and Ellison can fight her if he doesn't like it when she uses it in her next article) has managed to stay on the right side of refined or if it's tipped over into cheesiness.

 

The truth is though it's actually more of an intellectual question; it doesn't really matter either way, because even if cheesy wins, it's still magical, it's still pretty. And the person who is most special to her in the world is at her side and that's all she really cares about right now.

 

And when she feels his hand, warm and heavy, on the small of her back, and his fingers deliberately brush against her hip, she thinks it's the same for him.

 

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

 

He doesn't say anything for a few seconds and when she looks at him, his expression is serious and his face shadowed. His eyes are soft though and she doesn't need to be a mind reader to know that he's thinking very hard about something. But then he seems to remember himself and he gives her a small smile, reaches up and pushes a stray strand of her hair away from her face, knuckles warm against her cheek.

 

“You ready?” he asks.

 

She nods. “Yeah. You?”

 

“Yeah,” he says taking a deep breath. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

 

They do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "You will miss me when I burn" by Soulsavers featuring Mark Lanegan. It's a great Kastle song actually - everyone should listen to it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank u r a disaster. David too.

The inside of the restaurant matches the outside. It’s pretty without being pretentious, understated and yet somehow also cozy; all medium tone woods and white linens, fairy lights and votive candles. The tables, most of them occupied, are arranged in clusters with booths along two of the walls next to big sash windows.

 

Karen glances around the room as Frank takes her coat and hands it to the concierge, thinks she spots David and Sarah in one of the booths against the far wall. They’re leaning into one another, drinking wine and eating olives. They're giggling and David has a hand in Sarah’s hair and they both seem pretty much oblivious to everything around them. She guesses that’s only fair. They were apart for so long and, now that they’ve been given a second chance, it seems only right they should be like this. It’s the thrill of a new relationship but the security of having the groundwork already established.

 

“Ready?” Frank asks.

 

Yes, yes she is ready. She thinks the truth is she might have been ready since the moment he put his head on hers in that elevator and said everything he needed to say without words.

 

Maybe even before.

 

It's a lot to deal with. So is he.

 

She doesn't think she wants to change that.

 

And then his hand is resting lightly on the small of her back, thumb swiping across her skin so softly that it almost feels like teasing and she has to stop herself from pushing back into him, and he’s guiding her across the room towards the Liebermans.

 

She knows this is the beginning of something else for them. Something new. Something a little scary. But something good all the same.

 

_Hey lady, got any change?_

 

Yeah, she does. There's a whole lot of change lying around here. They're going to pick it up and use it all. Every last penny. Every last dime.

 

“Here we go,” Frank says under his breath and the strain in his voice is so obvious and intense that she halts mid stride only a few feet away from the Liebermans’ table and turns to him, puts a hand flat on his belly and feels his muscles contract under her palm.

 

“Hey,” she says when his eyes meet hers. “It's gonna be okay. It's just us. It doesn't matter what happens because it's still just us and that’s not going to change.”

 

She believes that, she realises. Things might be different after tonight, they might take a step forward or a step back or they might stay exactly where they are, although that seems unlikely. But fundamentally they won’t change because they’re already all they need to be one another.

 

The man with the skull, the girl with a gun.

 

And she wonders why and how her thoughts suddenly became so dark. So deep. She wonders if his are always like this.

 

She thinks maybe they are.

 

So she leans in, kisses his cheek softly like he sometimes does to her and she wishes he would do more often, lingers a little so she can breathe him in and then, on impulse, kisses him again.

 

Ragged breath, fingers flexing on her waist and he swallows, nods his head.

 

“Okay,” he says and his voice sounds like gravel.

 

 _We do this,_ she wants to say. _We've spent so many hours drinking coffee, so many afternoons that became evenings. You've saved my life so many times and maybe in some way I've saved yours. This - a little wine and some food - is easy. This is the easiest thing we've ever done._

 

It's a lie though. And they don't lie to each other.

 

It might be good for them, he might be glad they're doing it, but it's _not_ easy. And that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the fact that he hasn't done something quite like this in years. If ever.

 

_(I'm a little rusty)_

 

He is.

 

She wouldn't have it any other way.

 

All the same he nods slowly, lifts a hand and runs his thumb over her cheek.

 

She smiles. “Okay?”

 

“Okay.”

  


He sounds like he means it and that’s good enough for now, so she takes her hand off his stomach, doesn’t miss him exhaling sharply as she does and they make their way to the Liebermans who, for their part, are so enthralled with each other that Karen is fairly confident their little scene went entirely unnoticed.

 

And maybe, considering Frank’s current state of anxiety, that’s for the best.

 

“And then Frank said ‘his name is Lewis and he drives a cab’ like somehow Lewis The One and Only Cab Driver in New York is pinging on every federal database in the States…” David’s voice is friendlier than she expected. “I mean I'm good but there’s nothing I can do with that, but he’s so upset, he’s kicking chairs and banging on things, crying like Zach used to when he’d lose those wind-up cars under the couch …”

 

She looks at Frank out of the corner of her eye and he purses his lips.

 

“Hey asshole, shut up.”

 

“And there he is…” David says without missing a beat before looking up and giving them both a wide, and somewhat knowing, smile.

 

Karen’s seen pictures of the Liebermans before - Ellison threw a number of them across her desk when he figured out that Frank's presence at the incident at the hotel and her questioning about Micro were related - but she has to admit Sarah’s didn't really do her justice. The photos she saw were of a tired looking, somewhat wild-eyed and wary woman who wanted nothing more than to be away from the cameras and the press and behind closed doors where she could start rebuilding her family and life. But now she couldn’t look more different. She's small, petite even, with long auburn hair, dark eyes and an engaging smile. She’s wearing a short black dress and high-heel shoes and even though she looks incredibly chic, she can’t hide her deer-in-the-headlights expression as they’re introduced.

 

David on the other hand looks exactly like his picture. Tall and gangly, awkward with a wild bush of curly hair and a hardness in his eyes that belies his friendly face. He’s also wearing a suit and, while it’s no doubt expensive, there’s a certain cultivated scruffiness to it.

 

They both make to stand but Frank waves at them to stay seated and Karen’s oddly grateful for it. She's not quite sure of the proper etiquette for a meeting like this. Handshakes seem too formal, kisses too intimate and that leaves what? Hugs? Somehow that also seems wrong.

 

She slides into the booth, dress hiking up over her legs as she does. It’s not intentional but Frank sees anyway and he catches her eye as he shifts in next to her. It’s not a look that necessarily has to mean something and maybe with another man it wouldn’t; Frank always looks at her like he doesn’t quite believe she’s real and also like she’s the most real, foundational thing in his life, like he is trying to figure her out and at the same time knows everything about her.

 

But this, this is different. This is something a little darker, something that makes her breath rattle and her whole body feel loose. And then he’s sitting so close that she can smell his aftershave and feel the heat of his skin through his shirt. His knuckles brush against the lace of her stockings and the tops of her thighs, as he moves his hands to rest on the table and even though she’s fairly sure he didn’t mean to, it doesn’t stop the shiver that shoots up her spine nor the wave of gooseflesh that follows.

 

He notices too. He can’t not. And he swallows audibly and tugs at his own hands.

 

_So._

 

And then David is talking and she has to force herself to look at him, ignore the prickles on her skin and hope everyone else does too.

 

“Wow Karen,” his voice is amicable. “It’s really good to finally meet you. I’d like to say I’ve heard so much about you but Chatty McChatFace over here…” he nods dismissively at Frank, “...has this whole ‘if I tell you, I’m gonna have to kill you’ thing going on, so you could be one of those lizard people running the government for all we know,” he frowns at her. “Please tell me you’re not a lizard person running the government … or if you are, let me know who I need to talk to about some problems I have with the current administration.”

 

“Come on David,” Frank’s voice is steady, indulgent even, but she can hear a small tremble in it and something about that makes her feel proud. Powerful. She put the tremble there and she’s not going to take it away. She doesn’t think he’d want her to anyway.

 

But David. Yes. David.

 

She gives him an agonised look, purses her lips.

 

“Oh god,” he says. “You’re gonna order live mice with a side of roaches aren’t you?”

 

“Well…” she shrugs.

 

“Ignore my husband,” Sarah chimes in. “He doesn’t know how to behave…”

 

“I thought you liked that,” David teases. “You weren’t complaining last…”

 

“Jesus Christ,” Frank jerks his head towards the empty bottle of rosé. “How many of those have you two had?”

 

“Stop judging us Frank.” David snaps. “They have really good wine here.”

 

“Two...,” Sarah whispers under her breath. “Three.”

 

“Each?” Frank asks and David rolls his eyes but doesn’t actually deny it.

 

This isn't exactly what Karen expected but then she doesn't truly have much idea of what she _did_ expect. Frank talks about David and Sarah when they meet. It's not like he ever hid the fact that he sees them fairly often and they are with the exception of Curtis, the closest he has gotten to actual friends at the moment. But Curtis is different too. He was there before Maria died - he’s seen the tragedy of Frank Castle unfold piece by piece whereas David and Sarah are an after, a piece of the puzzle that slotted into Frank’s life when all was said and done. Sometimes she wonders where that leaves her but she came to accept that labelling it is less important than what it is.

 

The waiter comes round with menus and offers to take drinks orders. David and Sarah ask for another bottle of rosé and Frank rolls his eyes.

 

“Come on,” David says. “This one is for all four of us to share.”

 

“Still means you two have probably had three bottles each…”

 

“Well it’s time you caught up then so you could stop being a downer. You’re killing my buzz…”

 

Across the table Sarah gives her a wry look, purses her lips as if to say this is pretty much normal whenever David and Frank are together.

 

“So Karen,” she says not so surreptitiously elbowing David in the side. “You work at the newspaper?”

 

She nods. “Coming up for two years now.”

 

“Was it always something you wanted to get into?”

 

The question catches her a little off guard. She’s never really thought about her job in those terms. She’s good at it and she enjoys it and it helps that Ellison trusts her and gives her a lot of free reign but at the same time it was something she kind of fell into. She doesn’t believe in fate and she doesn’t believe that there’s some omnipotent being guiding people’s every move but if she did, she would probably credit it with her job.

 

She shrugs. “Not really. I was a PA before and that wasn’t going anywhere fast…” she glances at Frank but his face is unreadable. He’s watching her intently though and she sees David is too. “And then I met Frank when he was in the hospital and I…  well, it just seemed that no one was asking the right questions and everyone was just accepting whatever was handed to them and I knew there had to be more to it.” She looks at him frowning. “There was.”

 

There was so much more.

 

He touches her arm then. It’s just a light graze of his knuckles across her bare skin but it feels like important. It’s both a thank you and an acknowledgement of where they started, where they’ve been. It’s also something else. Something that makes the fine hairs on her arm stand up and sends another little shiver down her spine. She doesn’t think the Liebermans missed it that time.

 

“I…,” she clears her throat, tries to find some way of not advertising the fact that she feels like she’s about to lose her mind a little. “I guess I have a knack for it you know? I can find things… figure them out. I know when something is missing or wrong.”

 

Sarah nods but David huffs a little. It’s not mean or menacing. Rather, it’s self-deprecating, like he’s annoyed at himself for thinking Frank had no recourse when he first approached him, like he’s had to reassess his skills and is being reminded now that in some ways they are very lacking.

 

“You got something you wanna say Lieberman?”

 

Frank. Teasing slightly. Good natured.

 

David shakes his head. “No I can just see why you keep her to yourself.”

 

It’s an awkward compliment and likely the only type David knows how to pay but she finds herself smiling at him all the same. Similar to how she felt when she first met Foggy, something tells her that fundamentally these are good people. They’re good people who’ve lost a lot and they deserve to get some of it back.

 

The wine arrives and the waiter takes their orders. David tries to make a joke about roaches but Sarah elbows him in the side again. She doesn't even try for subtlety this time.

 

The conversation flows fairly easily after that.

 

Sarah tells her about their children - Zach and Leo. Frank’s mentioned the kids before, moaned that Zach was an asshole who disrespected his mother and sister, that he needed a male role model and he wasn’t sure David was up to the task, and complained that father and son were too similar all the while completely missing the same could be said for him and Frank Junior based on the stories he’s told her. But judging by how Sarah is speaking it seems a lot of Zach’s troubles might be in the past. She talks about her yoga class and her book club, tells Karen she should come to one of them, or both, that it would be good to have a normal friend there. Says she likes the yoga but can’t stomach the kale smoothies and David makes gagging noises, says of all the terrible things the world has given them in the last few years, kale is by far the worst. She likes book club too but the other women are a bit pretentious and don’t get why sometimes she just wants to read trash and sometimes can't be bothered with anything heavier than a bodice ripper.

 

“Sarah likes bodice ripping,” David adds helpfully.

 

By the time the starters arrive - burrata with figs and honey - Karen finds she’s actually quite relaxed and it’s not even the alcohol (although the same can’t really be said for David and Sarah). The Liebermans have really gone out of their way to make her feel like she’s part of the strange little group they’ve formed with Frank even if exactly what that group is, is hard to define. In many ways it feels like he was a stray they took in and didn’t have the heart to throw out.

 

But it’s good. It’s very good.

 

“So Karen...,” says David around a bite of cheese. “You going to tell us how you met Frank? First impressions? If you thought he was a psycho murderer don’t feel too bad. We all had that.”

 

Sarah looks up and it’s not hard to see the confusion on her face, a hint of what Karen can only identify as pain in her eyes.

 

“I didn’t,” she says softly.

 

Something passes between the three of them then. Something Karen can’t quite define. It’s not exactly tension, but it’s in the same sphere. There’s history here. History she doesn’t even know and while she’s not upset about it - god knows there are things about her Frank doesn’t know and she has no idea how or even if she would tell him - it does intrigue her.

 

She sips her wine, waits this out to see if someone will say something but no one does. And then David’s talking again and the strange atmosphere vanishes as fast as it came.

 

“So was it love at first sight? Or were his roguish good looks not enough? You like bruised eyes and missing teeth? I mean that smile… dental bills must be enormous, you guys have good coverage?” David gulps wine, pours another glass. “Did he woo you Karen? Buy you flowers? Take you out for dinner… a little dancing?”

 

He stretches and leans back in the booth, seems to try to casually slip an arm around Sarah's shoulders which is equal amounts of pointless and endearing.

 

“Ignore him,” Frank says taking a gulp of his wine. “He’s an asshole.”

 

She gives him a kick under the table and he can't hide the smirk on his face as she does.

 

She turns back to David and Sarah. David’s twirling a lock of Sarah's hair around his fingers.

 

“Actually, he chased me through a hospital with a shotgun.”

 

She tries to deadpan it but she doesn't need to. She thinks David probably already knew or if he didn't, he expected something similar.

 

He laughs out loud.

 

“Smooth,” he says and turns to Sarah. “Told you that kinda thing is just foreplay to them.”

 

“Oh come on,” Frank puts his glass down on the table. “It wasn't like that.”

 

Karen touches his hand. “Frank, it was exactly like that.”

 

David snorts.

 

“So what then Karen? No one’s ever chased you through the hospital with a shotgun in order to ask you out before so you figure he deserves a chance for originality?”

 

She chuckles. “No, I was involved with someone else at the time.”

 

This isn’t hard to talk about. It isn’t. Maybe once it would have been. Maybe once the very idea of talking about Matt like this would have pained her, but it’s different now. She’s not who she was a year ago. She’s not who she was when she first met Matt and Foggy, and she’s okay with that.

 

Even so, there’s a brief moment of heavy silence at the table and Sarah lifts her eyebrows, glances at David who, for his part, is undeterred.

 

“So Frank killed him,” he says decisively and tosses an olive into his mouth.

 

“No asshole, I did not kill him.” Next to her Frank shifts in his seat so that his leg is resting against hers.

 

“You just beat the shit out of him…”

 

“I did not beat the shit out of ...”

 

“Actually you did,” Karen interrupts. “You most definitely did beat the shit out of him … and you shot him in the face.”

 

Frank stops, frowns like he's trying to remember and then he grins smugly.

 

“Oh yeah, I did,” he says. “But that was about something else.”

 

“Oh well,” David says. “Glad we cleared that up.”

 

“Makes our story sound romantic,” Sarah says.

 

“Oh come on, our story _was_ romantic. Are you saying me getting all dressed up for you isn’t romantic?”

 

“David, you were dressed as a popsicle.”

 

“It was a costume party Sarah, sometimes it’s like I don’t even know you...”

 

Karen laughs, catches Frank's eye and he's smiling too.

 

It occurs to her that when David asked if it was love at first sight neither of them denied the love part. Neither of them even tried. It doesn't mean anything. She knows this. They love each other but they're not in love. They're falling though. Falling fast. Falling hard. Falling deep.

 

And maybe the “in love” part doesn't matter. Maybe it's all the same anyway. Frank loves her. Frank would die for her. He wouldn't feel the need to qualify it. In fact she thinks he'd be confused if she tried.

 

_(You still all heart?)_

 

She is. He is too.

 

She slides her hand over to his then, slips her fingers between his. It should be scary and maybe it is. Maybe just a little and maybe that’s just that thrill of something new, of this new level of closeness, but most of all it just feels right.

 

His hand closes on hers, thumb running over her knuckles and tugging gently so their hands rest on his thigh.

 

There's no need to qualify this either.

 

The mains arrive - David orders another bottle of rosé and Frank makes some comment about having to get them a cab to get home, which she thinks is probably wise. She notices that like her, Frank is drinking very little and he’s diluting each sip with a few mouthfuls of water. And sure, it could be that he’s worried about driving - the man is responsible to the point of pedantic - but she thinks it’s something else too. Something more like not wanting to take the edge off the evening with alcohol, something like wanting to experience everything with the kind of sharp clarity that only comes with complete sobriety.

 

She looks at her full wine glass and her empty water glass and thinks that she’s been having the same thought.

 

Reluctantly, she starts to pull her fingers out of his so she can eat but he tugs them back, squeezes hard and gives her a rueful smile before he lets go. He’s right. It does feel too soon. It _does_ feel like a loss but it’ll be okay. They have time now. They have all the time in the world and she thinks, judging by how things have been shaking out so far, that there’ll be a lot of opportunities for hand holding. Hand holding and something more.

 

“It’s Leo’s birthday next Saturday,” Sarah says as she tucks into her risotto. “It would be great if you came, both of you.”

 

“Yeah, you should,” David pipes up. “If the weather is okay, I’ll barbecue.”

 

“You sure your little girl wants boring uncle Frank there?” Franks asks, slicing off a piece of his chateaubriand.

 

David nods. “Yeah, I said the same thing. I don’t want boring uncle Frank there, but Leo does.” Sarah elbows David again and he laughs. “Maybe you can bring your guitar Frank. You know how to play _Happy Birthday_?”

 

“Yeah I know how to play _Happy Birthday_ ,” Frank sounds more affronted than he should be by the implication that he can’t.

 

So this is new too. It’s another one of those little things about him she didn’t know, another little surprise that she finds oddly comforting. He’s a gentleman, he likes dogs and for the longest time he called her ‘ma’am’. He likes to do things like this properly even as he rains hell down on his enemies. He’s mean and cruel, brutal even. The worst man. The best one too. He’s all rage and all heart.

 

He plays the guitar.

 

“I didn’t know you played,” she says and he gives her a gentle smile.

 

“Just a little.”

 

“Don’t listen to him,” David says. “He’s good. You should make him play for you sometime. Maybe a serenade Frank.”

 

She expects Frank to deliver some caustic retort but he doesn’t even seem to be listening to David. He gives her a small nod and it feels like a whole world she didn’t know existed opens up with the gesture..

 

And it's easy to picture too. Frank Castle sitting on her couch, bent over an acoustic guitar, fingers moving across the strings. She wonders if he sings too and, if so, what his voice sounds like. If it's as cracked and rough as his speaking voice or if it's smoother and richer. She doesn't care what the answer is, but she wants to know either way.

 

“Maybe I will,” she says and Frank nods.

 

“It'll be nice,” he says softly.

 

She smiles, turns back to her food and the conversation.

 

“Seriously, it would be great if you guys could make it … also, let me sweeten the pot,” David digs around in his pocket, pulls out his phone and starts swiping through the gallery.

 

“Here,” he says. “Look, we got a dog.”

 

That does get Frank's attention and he reaches across the table and grabs David's phone out of his hands.

 

He holds it up so she can see and there's a picture of a girl who she imagines to be Leo cuddling an adorable honey-coloured Labrador puppy.

 

“We got him last week, local shelter was dumped with a mom and her pups,” Sarah says.

 

“What's his name?” Frank asks.

 

“Spot,” David says without missing a beat.

 

“Are you kidding me? Spot?”

 

“Yeah, what's wrong with that?”

 

“Jesus Christ David. He's a Labrador, he doesn't even have spots!”

 

“So? It's original. And I thought you'd appreciate the sentiment.”

 

Frank huffs, rolls his eyes.

 

“Maybe if you guys get a dog…” David starts.

 

“Oh good God David,” Frank says. “Can you stop?”

 

David grins, takes his phone back and stuffs a napkin into his collar, eyes the rump steak in front of him like he's a cat and it's a particularly intriguing mouse.

 

“Come here baby,” he says as he stabs it with his fork and Karen snorts, takes a sip of wine.

 

Frank shakes his head, turns back to his meal and for a while they all eat in silence.

 

She's also ordered the risotto and it's good and creamy and when Frank nonchalantly takes a forkful of it off her plate she makes a show of glaring at him.

 

“Careful,” David says through a mouthful of steak. “You're gonna get shot.”

 

“There's only one person who’s gonna get shot at this table,” Frank snaps back.

 

“For heaven's sake you two, no one is going to get shot,” Sarah says. “I think we’ve all had quite enough of that to last two lifetimes.”

 

She's right. They have and even though Karen knows that Frank and his punishing isn't so much about consequences as it is a necessity, she hopes that maybe - just maybe - this peace can last for a while. That maybe she extend the calm before the storm for as long as she needs to.

 

And she doesn't want to think about it now. She doesn’t have to either.

 

“They used to have a dance floor here,” David says wiping a hand across his mouth. “I’m sorry they don’t have it anymore.”

 

“They take it away when you make the reservation?” Frank asks.

 

“What's that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means I've seen you dance.”

 

David grins and rolls his shoulders and Frank snorts.

 

“I'm pretty good.”

 

“Yeah…” Frank says. “You have one move.”

 

“Yeah I can show you,” he says making to stand.

 

Sarah puts a hand on David's arm, shakes her head firmly and he relaxes back into his seat.

 

The waiter comes to collect the plates and Sarah orders another bottle of wine with dessert.

 

“I _am_ good,” David insists. “You should see me when…”

 

Sarah leans up and whispers something in David's ear and even though her voice is low and the music is playing, Karen swears she hears her saying something that sounds like “You can dance later.”

 

And by the look on David's face, she doesn't think she's heard wrong.

 

Next to her, Frank shakes his head again, shifts and leans back against the seat, thigh still pressed against hers.

 

“Sorry,” he says under his breath, although he doesn’t sound sorry at all - if anything he sounds amused by how tipsy the Liebermans are. “I wanna say they’re not usually like this…”

 

She turns her head to look at him over her shoulder. He's relaxed, as relaxed as a man like him ever is and she grins.

 

He smiles back but then his eyes flicker over her face in that way he sometimes does when they're saying goodbye after coffee and it feels like he's trying to see all of her at once, including the bits she’s not ready to share with him.

 

But even then she's not usually given to looking away from him. His gaze isn't something she usually finds she wants to temper. It's hard and intense and something about being able to withstand it without truly thinking about it makes her feel like she's more than the sum of her parts and that in turn, they - whatever they may be - are too.

 

Sometimes though… sometimes like now, it's too much. Sometimes she knows if she stares at him too long, she's not going to be able to look away.

 

And they _are_ at dinner with the Liebermans. And even if both of them are more drunk than not, she doesn't think kissing Frank Castle breathless in the middle of this restaurant will go unnoticed. Nor would it be the way she wants to kiss him the first time - and she wonders that that is something she’s considered, that there’s an image of it forming in her head and it’s becoming increasingly detailed as the night wears on.

 

So she turns away, looks back at Sarah and David and, as she does she feels Frank’s fingers come down tentatively on her back where her dress is cut low.

 

His hand is warm but somehow it makes her shiver all the same and she has to suppress a gasp as his thumb traces the ridge of her shoulder blade and then slips a little lower to tease the skin just under the edge of her dress.

 

It's not even a particularly deliberate movement. It's gentle and easy, simple even.

Nothing to it. Nothing other than everything.

 

“So you'll come?” Sarah asks. “Both of you? You don't have to bring anything.”

 

It takes Karen a second to realise they've jumped back to Leo’s birthday and she glances at Frank again, lifts her eyebrows.

 

He's not looking at her though. He's staring intently at his fingers where he's slowly drawing loops and whirls over her bare skin, knuckles trailing up to the nape of her neck and then the gentle heat of his palm as his hand travels down again, the small spark in her scalp as a few strands of hair gets caught between his fingers.

 

“Yeah,” he says without missing a beat. “Sure.”

 

“Great,” says David. “I’m going to go and get a new grill on Monday. Frank if you wanna come along…”

 

His voice fades with each stroke of Frank’s hand and even though she’s aware that she’s part of the conversation too, she finds it hard to focus on anything but the warmth of his skin and the goosebumps blooming on hers.

 

For his part, Frank grunts noncommittally to most of what David says, vaguely agrees to help him find the equipment he needs. He’s not really into the conversation anymore either and even though she is genuinely enjoying the Liebermans’ company, she has to admit she feels exactly the same way.

 

The fact is it’s time to go. It’s time to start the next part of the evening, even if the next part is nothing more than Frank leaving her at her front door and disappearing for another month when they meet for coffee and try and figure out whether they can kiss each other goodbye or not.

 

But she doesn’t think that’s how this evening is going to go. She doesn’t think that at all.

 

“You good?” he asks quietly as the waiter hands out their desserts, refills their wine glasses.

 

She nods. She is good. This is good.

 

 _They_ are good.

 

She didn’t think that was something she would ever imagine was possible if someone had told her a few months ago that she’d be on an honest-to-god date with The Punisher.

 

But things change. Or, she thinks as she takes a breath and leans back into him, feels his hand slide down to her waist and then curl over hip, they don’t. Maybe this is always what they were. Never just friends, always bonded by something more fundamental than shared histories and a mutual attraction.

 

His hand twitches against her and she feels his breath hot against her shoulder.

 

It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Like she said earlier, this is just them. And maybe it feels like something more and maybe it is. But at the core of this entire thing is just them and who they are. And nothing else needs to happen for that to be one of the most special things she has in her life.

 

Across the table Sarah rests her head on David’s shoulder and he grins smugly.

 

“Look at us Frankie boy. Couple of months ago we were eating freeze dried rice in a basement and now we’re sitting here with two knockouts we don’t deserve.”

 

“David you’ve had too much to drink.”

 

“Maybe,” he says shovelling a forkful of what he insists is carrot cake but is very obviously chocolate chip into his mouth. “Maybe, but it's still true.”

 

Frank mumbles something next to her which she can’t make out but assumes it’s an agreement anyway.

 

The rest of dessert and coffee pass without incident. Her chocolate and hazelnut fondant, like everything else here, is delicious, and Frank’s affogato is strong and the bitterness of it slices right through the sweetness when she tastes it.

 

Afterwards David wants to stay for whiskey and while Karen’s usually extremely partial to a single malt, she’s happy when Frank shakes his head, makes some excuse about it being past bedtime.

 

“You turn into a pumpkin?” David’s voice is slurred as they get the check.

 

“What?” Frank asks.

 

“After midnight? You turn into a pumpkin? Like Sleeping Beauty?”

 

“What are you on about?”

 

“Sleeping Beauty,” he says again and Sarah whispers “Cinderella” under her breath to him. But her voice is also a little thick and she’s slightly unsteady as the make their way outside into the cold night air.

 

“Yeah, the only Sleeping Beauty is going to be you when you can’t get out of bed tomorrow because your head is four times the size it should be.”

 

“Sarah’s gonna wake me up with a kiss,” David says.

 

“Sarah is going to do no such thing,” she retorts, but judging by her smile and the way she’s wedged herself into his side, it seems to Karen that David is pretty much on the money with that one.

 

~~~

 

It’s when they’re outside that things get weird. Not that aspects of this entire evening haven’t been weird already. Not that there haven’t been moments she’s wondered about, flagged to come back to either alone or with Frank should he feel like talking about them.

 

But the night takes a decidedly odd and decidedly solid turn as they’re standing outside in the cold air, waiting to say goodbye.

 

And she could put it down to David being quite drunk - heaven knows it wouldn’t be a lie, but she doesn’t think so. She thinks the three of them might not even be aware of the dynamic they have, the strange deference both Frank and David have to Sarah and consequently or maybe even causally how Sarah herself seems to rail against the idea of who and what Frank is and can be.

 

It's not that Karen doesn't get it. She was there once too. But she thinks that somehow for Sarah it isn't a matter of accepting what was always there with Frank, it's about making peace with something she didn't know.

 

She glances at him. It seems that it doesn’t really matter where or how you get to know him, he always brings something with him: Frank Castle and The Punisher and it doesn’t matter which one he shows first, because finding out the other one exists always pulls the world out from under you.

 

He’s standing near her, not touching her but close enough that she can feel he’s running hot like he usually does. Even these last few times they’ve said goodbye after their monthly coffee dates, waiting there in the snow or the wind, she’s felt how he burns in her arms. He’s doing it again now and she has a sudden and somewhat overwhelming desire to melt into him, slide her arms around his waist and rest her head on his shoulder, hold him like that for a moment that doesn’t need to end too soon.

 

 _Later_ , she tells herself. _Later_.

 

There’s an after now. And maybe it’s not just for him.

  
He offers to drive the Liebermans home but David waves him off.

 

“No,” he says. “You’ve got to go and turn into a pumpkin. You too Karen. Besides the cab will be here soon… and we’re gonna make out in the backseat.”

 

“We most certainly are not,” Sarah says sternly but she erupts into a fit of giggles and again Karen thinks David probably knows his wife better than even she is willing to admit.

 

And as if by magic, she sees headlights flashing through the trees and the unmistakable canary yellow of a New York cab which is somehow bright enough to be seen despite the darkness.

 

Sarah extracts herself from David’s side, comes over and hugs Karen goodbye, whispers that it was good to meet her and she hopes she’ll see her again, that they need to ditch the boys at some point and go out together and drink wine and make bad decisions. It’s a good idea, even the bad decisions part and Karen nods, says they can talk about it next weekend at Leo’s birthday and tries very hard not to consider the fact that her and Frank now have another occasion looming on the horizon that has nothing to do with their few stolen hours once a month in a cozy coffee shop she’s not even sure is visible to the rest of the Hell’s Kitchen population.

 

“It was good to meet you,” Sarah says. “You’re very special to him.”

 

There’s something almost wistful about the way she says it, sheepish even, but before Karen can answer, Sarah smiles and goes to Frank, hugs him too, whispers in his ear as he kisses her cheek. He nods solemnly and pats her shoulder. And there it is again, that strange respect that borders almost on an intimacy, that sudden and irrefutable knowledge that Sarah and Frank’s relationship exists entirely separately to David and Frank’s relationship.

 

But before she can fully grasp what it is David is looming over her, wrapping her up in a giant bear hug, squeezing her tight and telling her that if he had to choose someone to outsmart him he’d choose her every time. And then he gives her a big boozy kiss right on the lips, tells her to kick Frank’s ass and stumbles over to Frank to clap him on the back, declare loudly and drunkenly how much he loves both of them and that they’re all best friends.

 

“Come on David,” Sarah says taking his hand and pulling him towards the cab, standing on her tiptoes to plant a less than chaste kiss on his cheek which makes him grin from ear to ear.

 

And that should be it. But it's not. Because the evening couldn't just end on a high note.

 

And it’s not for her ears. It’s not. But she hears it anyway.

 

“Thanks for not running off with my wife Frank. That would have sucked so bad for all of us.”

 

There’s a long silence. So long. So very long. It’s probably only a second. Probably not even a full one.

 

But it feels like forever.

 

“Oh for Christ’s sake, get out of here asshole,” Frank shoves David towards the car, nods at Sarah but the tremble in his voice is unmistakable and Karen knows for a fact that it isn’t about her anymore.

 

The Liebermans don’t seem to notice though. They wave, slide into the backseat and in a few seconds the car has disappeared back into the trees and it’s just them.

 

Just them and this heavy, heavy secret she didn’t know about until seconds ago.

 

It makes sense now. So much of it. So much of this.

 

A family without a father, a father without a family.

 

She wonders why she didn't see it before. She wonders if she just didn’t want to.

 

When Frank finally looks at her, his eyes are dark and deep and she knows there are things they’re going to need to say, things they need to tell each other and things they might not overcome, but when he holds out his hand, she only hesitates a moment before she takes it even though the expression on his face tells her he didn't expect her to at all.

 

He pulls her close, fingers sliding into her hair to cup the back of her head, breath warm as he kisses her cheek and his stubble scrapes on her skin. He’s trembling a little and she hates it but she has no idea how to stop it or even if she should.

 

“Let me tell you everything,” he whispers. “Please.”

 

She nods against him, presses her lips into the hollow of his throat, feels his pulse beating strong and hard against her mouth.

 

“Yes,” she says. “Tell me everything.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two losers...
> 
> *shakes head and rolls eyes* (mostly at myself)
> 
> Okie dokie so it looks like there will be one more chapter after this and then an epilogue.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think.

He waits until they get back to her place. Waits until they're parked in her street and her building looms above them like a sentinel.

 

Outside the air is heavy with mist and it distorts the streetlights, the shape of the cars and the people walking by. Inside she's as sharp as glass, every line of her perfect and pristine from the hard silver heels to the golden wave of hair that shines like a halo in the dark depths of his truck.

 

Still, it's her eyes mostly that get to him. Big and blue and seemingly sucking all the light out of the city and into herself. He could get sucked in too.

 

He thinks he already has.

 

 _How are you even real?_ he wants to ask. _How?_

 

She’d tell him to stop if he did. She’d tell him her reality isn’t in dispute and she’d be right. She’s easily the most real thing in his life and has been since the day she walked up to his hospital bed and shoved his family in his face.

 

So he doesn’t ask. He thinks it might upset her.

 

Instead he swallows heavily, touches her wrist.

 

“Can I come up?”

 

He wants to laugh at himself for how it sounds, how cliche it is. Of course he’d ask to come up. She’s bought a pretty dress and he gave her flowers and took her on a date. This is a bad romcom and he's pining for the girl he’ll never have. Except it isn't and he isn’t.

 

It's not a romcom at all. He doesn't think he gets romcoms. And she doesn’t either. Not after Matt. Not after Maria.

 

But she can give him something all the same. Something better.

 

“Yeah,” she says. “I'd like that.”

 

He nods. He said he wanted to do this properly and he does and he thinks to a large degree he has. But _this_ ... this in itself isn't proper. Proper is a kiss on the cheek, maybe on the lips. Proper is a promise he’ll call her tomorrow. Proper is saying goodbye like a gentleman. Proper isn’t telling her about another woman and the lies and bad judgment that came with her.

 

But then again, maybe this is proper _for them_. For him and for her and for all the gunfire and bullets in between. And he doesn’t want to think too hard about it either way.

 

He gets out of the truck, goes to her side and opens the door for her. She takes his hand and steps out onto the wet pavement. He thinks she indulges him in these kinds of things - lets him be that gentleman he so desperately aspires to be - at least for tonight.

 

And the truth is - and this is a fundamental one - she's a lady.

 

She takes a second to look at the sky, to see the stars shimmering through the wetness, the moon high above them like a sliver of silver against the night. It shines down on her like she’s the only thing in the whole city worth its glow and he thinks maybe that too is a fundamental truth. She might be all light, all pale skin and pale hair and eyes like chips of ice - she might be an antithesis to the darkness, but he can’t help but feel she’s in her element here.

 

She belongs.

 

He does too. And maybe this is where they can be together.

 

Fingers twining through his, curve of her hip pressing into the hard stone of his, and she leads him inside and upstairs.

 

~~~

 

She steps out of her shoes when they're inside, and slips her coat off her shoulders. He takes it and hangs it up on the rack next to his.

 

She doesn't look at him as she heads to the kitchen, pulls a box of matches out of the draw and lights a set of tealight candles on the counter next to the roses, another on the coffee table.

 

He finds he likes watching her move - always has, if he's honest. There's a sleekness to her, a certain deliberation in each gesture and he can't deny that he’s drawn to the way her dress skims her hips and the flash of skin where it dips low on her back.

 

She's soft and smooth there and he wonders if she'll let him touch her again after he tells her what he needs to. He thinks she might.

 

He thinks the only mistake he can make is lying.

 

“Drink?” She asks.

 

He nods. He's surprised by how similar she’s allowing this is to get to the last time too. Surprised she's letting it play out like this.

 

_(Hey lady, got any change?)_

 

_Could you spare me a dime Karen Page? A dime and a moment of your time? I know it's precious but can you spare it? I need it. I need it now more than ever._

 

“Whisky?”

 

So not quite the same then.

 

“Sure.”

 

He guesses they'll keep that to themselves, not let David know they went home to drink. Although he does wonder exactly how much David will remember about tonight.

 

Serves him right though. A hangover from hell might just be better than a fork in the eye.

 

He walks to the window, glances at the sky. It's going to rain again soon. The wet season is well on its way and it surprises him again how quickly that happened. There was snow and then there wasn't. There was winter and the next day there was spring. And then there was her.

 

He's being downright poetic and he doesn't care.

 

And then she's behind him, holding out his drink and all he can think about is how much he'd like to put his lips on hers, taste her, even if it's just for a second.

 

He doesn't want to choose between her cheek or her temple. He doesn't want to have to think about the differences and the similarities. He wants it all, her shoulders, her throat, her lips. Everything else too. Under his fingers, his mouth. In his heart.

 

He thinks he already has the last part.

 

But not now. Not yet.

 

He takes the glass, clinks it against hers, and she smiles, takes a sip.

 

It's good. Smooth. Something tells him Karen Page wouldn't skimp on whisky. Single malt, Scottish, something distilled in the highlands, probably by a red haired man in a kilt with a bunch of hairy cows outside. His name is probably Angus MacAngus and he lives near Loch Lochy.

 

“That's good,” he rumbles and she nods, heads to the couch, stopping to put on the record player as she does. Her hips sway slightly as she moves, the dim candlelight turning her dress a deeper shade of blue and casting shadows across her skin.

 

_A moment of your time Karen Page. Just a moment. And then forever._

 

He follows her, sits down closer than he should, considers for a moment putting an arm around her, letting her rest against him. But he doesn't. It's too soon.

 

And he's got some explaining to do.

 

He wants to laugh at himself for it. He hasn't been on a first date for the best part of two decades. And the last time he did he wasn't much more than a teenager and neither was she and everything was so different then. And here he is now sitting in candlelight and sipping whisky with a leggy blonde who keeps a hand cannon in her purse and whose eyes are enough to bring a man to his knees.

 

And he's about to tell her how he lost himself for a moment with a family that looked just like his but wasn't; how easy it was to fall back into it and delude himself that he could belong.

 

And the worst part is he thinks she’ll get it. He thinks she’ll understand.

 

He's always known there's a lot more to Karen Page than meets the eye.

 

She curls her legs underneath her and his eyes are drawn to her painted toenails, pink and slightly dimmed underneath the sheerness of her hose. He has a sudden desire to pull her foot into his lap, run his thumb across the arch, work his fingers over her ankles.

 

He wonders if she'd let him, thinks she probably would.

 

And wouldn't that be a thing?

 

But he's getting ahead of himself, way ahead of himself.

 

He has to do penance first. He has to go to confession.

 

 _Mea Culpa_ and three Hail Marys.

 

_Ave Maria._

 

_Maria._

 

_A moment of your time Karen Page._

 

“So…” she says and her voice is light and sweet but there’s a nervousness to it and he has to stop himself from blurting out that she doesn’t need to feel that way, that it’s in the past and she’s not and everything that happened is inconsequential. But that’s cheating and he doesn’t get to cheat.

 

So…

 

So indeed.

 

He hasn’t thought about where to begin, hasn’t planned it out. He could have done so on the drive, he could have figured out a starting point and maybe even an ending point too but there was a dishonesty in that. He doesn’t want to manipulate, he doesn’t want to downplay. He has truths and he’s promised to give them to her and he won’t try and lessen the blow for either of them.

 

“The address you gave me that day on the pier…”

 

She glances up sharply.

 

“... I went to check it out,” he sits back, takes another sip of his drink. This is harder than he thought. Much harder. He knows what he is and she does too and yet telling her about these darker sides of himself still feels wrong, like he should at least try and keep it from her, hide it. Save whatever innocence she has left and get as far away from him as she can.

 

He'd let her go too. He'd understand.

 

But she's not innocent. He doesn't know the details but it's as obvious as the. 38 in her purse.

 

Still though.

 

Innocent or not, she's a lady and this story isn't very gentlemanly.

 

But then she touches his hand, fingers gliding over scarred knuckles and he's knows she doesn't want to leave. That she's never wanted to.

 

She doesn't flinch when he tells her what he did, how he infiltrated the Lieberman family, how he told Sarah he was Pete fucking Castiglione and used her and her children as leverage to draw Micro out of the shadows.

 

He doesn't feel the need to tell her they were safe, that he would have never done anything to harm them; that he isn't like that.

 

She knows. She's always known.

 

He tells her how he found his broken self fitting into their broken family; how for a few hours every few days he got to be a reasonable facsimile of a father, a husband.

 

And that's where it gets confused. That’s where Zach starts blending into Junior and Leo into Lisa. And even though he knows they're not the same - he knew it then and he knows it now and he never once wished for it to be different - he finds it very hard to choose his words. Karen’s the writer. She's the one who gets to play with words and sounds and form them into something that can hurt or heal, that can give a person a moment of clarity they didn't know they could have, or break them down into nothing - god knows she’s done that with him enough, sometimes not even with words at all. But that's not him. He's hard and rough and eloquence isn't his strength.

 

But he tries. He tries so hard.

 

“I met his family,” he says. “And for a second I forgot it wasn’t mine.”

 

He looks her right in the eye as he says this and is surprised to see her gasp as he does, her breath hitching and her bosom heaving and he doesn't miss how her knuckles are bone white around her glass and her hands are trembling.

 

She's scared. He knows this. He's scared her. And it wasn't with guns and bullets. It wasn't with torture and a rage he sometimes feels is burning away all the good bits of him that are left. He's scared her with the other part of him, the part that loves so much it hurts, the part that has done nothing for the past two years other than try and find a place to belong. He’s scared her and the truth of it is that he didn’t know he could, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that because it tells him something about her - about _them_ \- that he didn’t know or wasn’t willing to know.

 

He’s fallen in love with her. She wasn’t meant to fall right back.

 

But she has.

 

_Beautiful girl. Beautiful wonderful girl._

 

It's no reason to stop though. He promised the truth and he'll give it to her no matter how hard and confusing it might be. She wants honesty - she _demands_ it - and he won’t disrespect that. He won’t disrespect whatever it is that they have.

 

He does touch her face though, a small sweep of his thumb across her cheekbone and she turns her head into his palm. And then he sips whisky and she does too and for a while they don’t say anything and listen to the music; it’s some hipster he doesn't know with a lugubrious voice and a harmonica is singing about being a heartbreaker and a ladies’ man, about how he wants a woman to come and hold him and take the pain away and then leave the next morning with nothing but a note on the pillowcase.

 

 _Yeah asshole, you can fuck right off. You can fuck_ right _off. Lady doesn't owe you a goddamn thing._

 

Glass firmly on the table, gentle clearing of her throat, dress hiked a little too high for him not to notice the warp and weft of her stockings again pale skin and she speaks.

 

“What happened next?”

 

_What happened next is I put an end to it. I gave David his family back, I came for you and saved your life and then I disappeared back into the shadows until I couldn’t stand not seeing you anymore. I asked you out and you said yes and here we are._

 

He doesn’t say any of it. He looks at her in the flickering candlelight, wonders if her eyes somehow became bluer than he remembers, watches as she bites her lip and then gently lays a hand on his arm and nods.

 

“Karen…”

 

“Go on,” she says. “I want to know.”

 

She wants it all. The whole truth. Nothing but.

 

He gives it all to her in much the same way he does with himself and with his whole heart because he can’t do it any other way. Not with Karen Page. She doesn’t allow it. She never has.

 

His voice is stilted and it barely sounds like his and even the lubrication of another gulp whisky doesn’t help when he starts telling her about how he fixed Sarah’s house - her garage door, her headlight, the trash compactor. He tells her about Zach and his knife and how he got to play ball with him in the street, how Leo read with him and _Life of Pi._

 

_Penny and dime, penny and dime._

 

A fleeting image of Sarah's arms around him, mouth on his and she tastes like wine and she's soft and warm and everything that feels so right about it is so wrong.

 

_I couldn't take my wife to bed..._

 

That's still true.

 

He tells her that too. Tells her he should have seen it. That he was too stupid and too caught up in playing house and trying desperately to pretend this family made sense to him. That he didn't see how Sarah’s feelings towards him were evolving except that if he's honest with himself, he did.

 

And that was so wrong. It was so wrong of him. And it hurts. It hurts like he’s ripping his own heart out with his fingernails, squeezing it until it erupts in a bright red rain over both of them.

 

His blood on Karen Page’s lips, in her mouth, running through her veins.

 

And her hand is on his again, and her skin is soft and smooth and it feels like she’s throwing oil on troubled water, feels her calm spiralling outwards and through him now, up his arms and down his legs.

 

“It wasn’t an excuse,” he says. “She was kind and lost and I didn’t want to be lost anymore.” He looks at her then. “You were right Karen… I was lonely. I _am_ lonely.”

 

He’s been honest tonight. Everything he’s said has been the absolute and ultimate truth and yet somehow this feels like it’s more fundamental than anything else. The loneliness is a part of him and he’s a part of it and yes, he knows that on some level he’s asking her to change that, to make it go away and it isn’t fair. But he’s asking her anyway, because she’s Karen Page and he meets her for coffee the last Friday of every month and it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.

 

_A moment of your time. A moment please. And then all the moments after._

 

“Sarah didn’t deserve that,” he says softly. “She’s a good person and all I did was lie. About everything. And the thing is that even now, she’s forgiven me. Even after she saw what I did and who I was, even after she found out I knew David was alive and even now with you…”

 

He’s not sure what to say, not sure how to end that sentence without exposing himself to her completely, wearing his heart on his sleeve and not giving him an ounce of secrecy to hide behind.

 

“With me?”

 

She doesn’t let him off the hook. Not now. Not ever.

 

_Ave Maria. Mea Culpa._

 

It’s still a confession. His penance isn't done.

 

He covers her hand with his own, brings it to his mouth and ghosts his lips over her knuckles.

 

“Yeah, with you and what I feel for you.”

 

There, he’s said it. It’s out there in a way it wasn’t before.

 

She pulls her hand out of his, reaches up and touches his face, runs her thumb over his temple and then traces the shape of his ear, makes him shiver so hard that he has to turn away, grab his drink and knock back another gulp.

 

Karen Page always was too much. She’s never not been. Not since the first day he met her. And not all the other days in between.

 

She pulls his heart out of his chest, she stamps on it, she…

 

_(feeds that shit to a dog)_

 

He was always going to lose. Always.

 

Except she makes it feel like winning.

 

“Oh Frank,” she says.

 

He grits his teeth. He can’t stop now. Not when he’s this close. Not when it’s almost all said and done. Not when Karen Page’s eyes look like sapphires in the candlelight and the whisky she’s given him can make a man’s tongue so loose that he gives all his secrets away willingly.

 

And the truth of it is, it’s not even the whisky.

 

His hand closes around her wrist and her hand falls back into her lap. His eyes are drawn back to her legs and he chances the faintest brush of his knuckles against her thigh.

 

She shivers and threads her fingers through his.

 

“I let things go too far. She made me feel like I belonged. There was a place for me maybe somewhere still and maybe it wasn’t all gone. And I believed it.”

 

“What do you believe now?”

 

“It was a lie,” he says. “I couldn’t even tell them my real name. Had to lie about who I was … am.”

 

Fingers twining with hers again, soft, slow, moving together in the low light. Thumb pressing into her wrist, fingertips running over the bumps of her knuckles as hers trace the scars on his palm.

 

“I don't lie to you,” he says.

 

I _can't_.

 

“No,” she says. “You don’t. But I can't give you that Frank. I don't have the ready made family and the house in the suburbs. I've never done the things you have, you know that…”

 

There's a lilt in her voice that breaks right into him, cracks his bones and stabs at his heart, and he puts a hand on her leg, hushes her.

 

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

 

He runs his hand up to her elbow, and then, seemingly finding some courage he didn’t know he had, presses higher, fingers tracing the curve of her bicep, feeling how her skin prickles.

 

She shivers, gives him a small, almost shy smile.

 

 _Oh my girl,_ he wants to say, _if only you knew what you do to me. If only you knew how you tear me apart._

 

He thinks she might already know. Karen Page doesn’t miss much.

 

He shifts closer.

 

“I know that it wasn't real,” he whispers as he outlines the curve of her shoulder, the hollows of her collarbones. “Not the family, not the home. Not the feeling. My wife, my boy… my baby girl,” his voice cracks horribly and the words crowd his throat. “They were the best thing I’d ever done. An asshole like me shouldn’t have been able to do that much good but somehow I did… you know how that feels Karen? How it feels to know that something that good is yours? That you did it?”

 

She doesn’t say anything and he’s not sure whether it’s because she doesn’t want to interrupt him or because the answer is no. He thinks it could go either way and again he’s struck by how obvious it is that Karen Page has secrets and she doesn’t share them.

 

No matter though, if she gives him the time, he’ll wait until she does.

 

“You don’t just get that feeling anywhere. You can’t…” he traces the curve of her throat. “None of it was real because we don’t get to do that. We don’t get the things we’ve lost back like that. We need to start it again and grow it. It can't be given to me. It's too easy. It’s not real.”

 

“What's real Frank?” she asks, voice thick and halting, skin flushed under his hand.

 

He glances at the white roses still blooming in their pot, the sleekness of the petals, their white heads against the dark green leaves. There’s more of them than there were when he gave them to her. They’ve grown so much they might need to be repotted soon.

 

He runs his thumb down her cheek, takes a breath.

 

“This is real.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was shorter than I anticipated and I wondered if I should just add the epilogue onto the end of this so that it was longer but that didn't feel right. So yes, the epilogue still is the final chapter of this thing.
> 
> I wondered if I needed to do something to make it longer but honestly, I think it just works like this so I am going with it.
> 
> Thanks for reading this silly little story of mine. I know it was very saccharine and silly but it was one of those things that I firstly wanted to write and secondly kind of needed to because of certain shortcomings I saw in the show (not that I didn't really enjoy it, I just struggled with certain aspects of the story as being a little clunky).
> 
> Anyway, enough about that.
> 
> If you liked it please let me know.

They dance.

 

He’s not sure when or how it happened, whose idea it was or if it even was an idea at all. He’s not sure if it’s the whisky that made him forget or just the colour of her eyes, the sleek outline of her curves underneath her dress. But they dance and it doesn’t matter how they got there.

 

She’s warm in his arms, a smooth little flame that lights up the room more than the candles ever could. And he buries his face in her hair and she smells of mandarin and vanilla and he imagines she’d taste quite the same.

 

The hipster is still singing about the woman he loves and how he doesn’t deserve her and, for the first time since the record's been playing, Frank feels some kind of kinship with this maudlin man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, a kind of mutual understanding that will never be friendship or admiration but a kinship nonetheless.

 

But he doesn’t want to think about hipsters now. Now or ever again.

 

He doesn't know what time it is or how long they’ve been swaying like this, how long his mouth has been trailing kisses up Karen's shoulders, how long her fingers have been working their way through his hair, and her nose - with its still icy tip - has been pressed into his throat. 

 

The rain started and then stopped and then started again and some of the candles have gutted, while others are still desperately casting faint flickering light on her walls. On her. 

 

On _them_.

 

They’re mostly darkness, and he’s okay with that.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hair and he has no idea what he’s apologising for. Like him and like her, it’s too much to define but at the same time it’s important to say.

 

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” she says.

 

It is and she does. It’s a gift and a curse. All of it.

 

“You’ve got me,” he says.

 

_ All of me. Everything I have left to give. Everything that isn’t broken and destroyed and everything that is, if you want that too. _

 

He presses his lips to her throat again - a chain of kisses across her collarbones, her pulse under his mouth and his hands gliding along the smooth skin of her back.

 

She arches her neck and her nails scrape against his scalp, making him groan as his mouth moves up to cover hers.

 

When he kisses her he tries to be gentle and slow, tries to not push it too far and savour what he has, but she's not playing along and her mouth is hard and hot on his and he thinks might never stop kissing her, that he’ll carry on for as long as she’ll let him. 

 

So he does.

 

And he’s not sure how long that is. It also doesn’t matter. Because she’s sweet and wet and her tongue is as hungry in his mouth as his is in hers. And when he eventually comes up for air, the hipster’s record is spinning silently on the turntable but Frank’s thumbs are still pressing into the bumps of her ribs and her hand is covering his heart and he knows he’s nowhere near finished. He’s nowhere near done with tasting her sweetness and drinking her down. 

 

Smoother than whisky, sweeter than chocolate and then she’s winding her arms around his neck and dragging him into her, and he captures her lips again with his and doesn’t think much after that.

 

~~~

 

Later they half sit, half lie on the couch. Her legs are draped over his and his hand rests on her belly, his head on her breast and he listens to her heartbeat.

 

_ Dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun. _

 

It’s gentle and soothing. It’s also the loudest thing in the world.

 

_ (You’re still all heart.) _

 

She is. She can’t be anything else.

 

Her dress is getting wrinkled and so is his suit but she doesn’t seem to care and neither does he. He touches her hip through the satin and then runs a hand down her leg and up again. Her stockings are soft but her skin is softer and he forces himself to stop when his thumb brushes the top of her thigh.

 

He thinks he might just touch her forever, learn her through her clothes and then one day if he’s lucky enough learn her again without them.

 

So many possibilities. So many moments.

 

He lifts his head, kisses the swell of her breast where her neckline dips low, and then her neck, her lips.

 

Fingers in her hair, hand cupping the back of her head and he pulls away long enough to formulate words, thread them together in some kind of coherent sentence and find enough stamina to kick them out of his mouth.

 

“How about the next time I take you out, it’s just us?”

 

She touches his face, shifts under him so that he’s pressing into the space between her thighs and he thinks he might legitimately go out of his head, lose his mind all over Karen Page and never be the same again. But then again, he’s already done that and he wasn't the same. And somehow that was okay.

 

“I’d like that,” she says as her mouth finds his neck, teeth scraping along his jaw and making him shudder.

 

He should leave. This is well past whatever is proper. This is well into highly inappropriate territory, but he can’t bring himself to go and if anything, every time he moves, her arms seem to tighten around him and draw him closer than he was before.

 

As if she knows what he’s thinking - and the fact is he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Karen Page could and does read his thoughts, it would explain so many things - she turns her head to kiss his cheek, breathe softly in his ear.

 

“Stay… please.”

 

He wanted a moment of her time, but she’s giving him so much more.

 

He stays.


	9. Epilogue

 

He stops meeting her for coffee the last Friday of every month. He stops experimenting with different brews, different blends. He doesn’t order her tiny little pieces of shortbread or madeleines, little chocolates that melt against the side of her cup. They don’t sit there in their own little booth, in their own little world while she scolds him for whatever nastiness has gone down in the city and then indulges him while he talks about Maria and the kids and everything else in his life he has ever lost.

 

He doesn’t stand around wondering whether to kiss her goodbye when they leave and he doesn’t get a little attack hug out there in the street while she waits for her cab.

 

And even if he wanted to go back to that time, they couldn’t. He was apparently right about them being the coffee shop’s only customers because it’s shut the next time he walks by, windows boarded up and a crude handwritten sign announcing they've closed down and a number for anyone who has any questions.

 

He doesn't have any questions though. None at all.

 

He was so full of them once but somehow it feels like they’ve all been answered, whether they have or not.

 

He shrugs, turns around and heads to her apartment. The early summer sun beats down on him as he goes and children play in the parks as he passes them. It hurts but not quite as much as it once did.

 

When he gets to her building, he takes the stairs instead of the lift and he hesitates a moment before he knocks.

 

And this isn't a new thing anymore - him visiting her like this. He has his own shelf in her wardrobe and he's rapidly running out of space. He also has a spare toothbrush in her bathroom and that one needs replacing far more than the one in the dingy apartment he can no longer bring himself to call home.

 

Sometimes he wonders if it happened too fast but then he thinks that he's with Karen Page and that means everything happened just as it was meant to.

 

And then her door is opening she’s crushing him in a hug and his hands are as full as his heart and all he can do is stand there and take it before she drags him inside.

 

Karen Page. All heart. He doesn’t know how he got this lucky.

 

She's watching him as he moves around the apartment and she's smiling from ear to ear. Her sundress is short and he finds his gaze drawn to her legs and, for a moment, he's completely and utterly overcome by how good this is, how easy she's made the process of starting again, of building something new from the ground up so that it's all his. All  _ theirs _ .

 

He thought it would be hard labour but it doesn't feel like work at all.

 

He puts the packet of dark roast on the coffee table next to the heavy stone planter he's bought to pot the roses and reaches for the guitar slung over his shoulder. He sits down on the couch, plays a few chords, adjusts the tuning pegs and then looks her right in the eye. 

 

The man with the skull, the girl with the gun.

 

Okay, so maybe he has one question. One small one. 

 

“You got a moment Karen Page?”

 

She sits down next to him and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

 

She does. 


End file.
